Naji El Ali: 20 Years On

Today, 22 July 2007 marks two decades since Palestinian caricaturist Naji El Ali was shot--and eventually killed--by mysterious gunmen in London. El Ali had been forced into exile in the UK after the PLO leadership pressured Kuwait (that would be the Kuwait I live in now) to discontinue their protection of the artist, who had gained Pan Arab fame through his cartoons which appeared in Kuwait's quality Al Qabas (which I notice did not run a front-page story on this one today...).

El Ali's assassination was another of Palestine's multi-layered tragedies: Some are convinced that Arafat himself ordered the shooting (the reasons given vary from the somewhat plausible political motivations to the simply silly). Regardless, Yasser Arafat does of course carry some of the blame for El Ali's killing with him in the grave for having insisted that Kuwait (where he would have been reasonably safe) force the man out. In London, city of international espionage, nobody could be safe with a situation where the government tolerated a modest level of terrorism in order to better keep an eye on all the spooks.

I was reminded of this event, and the debate surrounding who to blame, in a discussion I had on Facebook and thought that it might be a good idea to bring it up on the blog...Despite all the different groups who try to claim him, Naji El Ali was most importantly an artist, whose work can not be commandeered for one cause or the other. So I'm going to remain quiet about what I think and instead post a site in honour of Handala, El Ali's emblematic character who became the poster boy for Palestinian refugees: http://www.handala.org