رد: ناجـي العليحنظلة 1937- 1987 Mr. Naji Al-Ali Naji al-Ali develope

Mr. Naji Al-Ali
Naji al-Ali developed a stark and symbolic style during his thirty-year campaign on behalf of the Palestinians. Unaligned with any political party he strove to speak to and for ordinary Arab people. His life was seamlessly interwoven with the trials of exiled Palestinians. Due to invasion, censorship and threats he lived in exile most of his life, much of the time between Beirut and Kuwait. The last two years of his life he spent in London.
Background, motivation & influences
Though the exact date of his birth would appear uncertain, he was born in 1936 or 1937 in Al-Shajara village between Nazareth and Tiberias in Galile. In 1948 and at the age of 11 the young boy as many other Palestinians, was forced out of Palestine. Naji along with has family settled down in Ain-al-Helwe refugee camp in Sidon in Southern Lebanon. In the late 1950s the late Palestinian poet Gassan El-Kanafani discovered Najis talent in drawing while on a visit to this camp.
" I started to use drawing as a form of political expression while in Lebanese jails. I was detained by the Deuxime Bureau (the Lebanese intelligence service) as a result of the measures the Bureau were undertaking to contain political activities in the Palestinian camps during the sixties. I drew on the prison walls and subsequently Ghassan Kanafani, a journalist and publisher of al-Huria magazine – he was assassinated in Beirut in 1971 - saw some of those drawings and encouraged me to continue, and eventually published some of my cartoons.“.
Work, interests and philosophy
Naji al-Ali finished his school education in Sidon but was unable to finish higher education in the Art institution he has enrolled in because of his family difficult financial situation. In the beginning of the sixties, the young man left to Kuwait to work in Al-Taliah magazine.
In the early 1970s he returned to Beirut from Kuwait and was on the Editorial Board of the prominent Lebanese newspaper Al-Safir:
"Working for al-Safir newspaper in Beirut in 1971 was the best part of my life, and the most productive. There, surrounded by the violence of many army, and finally by the Israeli invasion, I stood facing it all with my pen every day. I never felt fear, failure or despair, and I didnt surrender. I faced armies with cartoons and drawings of flowers, hope and bullets. Yes, hope is essential, always. My work in Beirut made me once again closer to the refugees in the camps, the poor, and the harassed."
During this period he also contributed drawings to Al-Khalij newspaper in the United Arab Emirates.
In 1982 during Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Naji al-Ali was an eyewitness to the terrifying massacre that took place in the Palestinian refugee camp of Sabra and Shatila. The devastating experience urged al-Ali to leave the country he grew up in to settle in Kuwait. During this period, he worked for both Al-Qabas (meaning ‘The Light‘ in English) – the largest Independent daily newspaper in the Middle East - and Al-Khalij newspapers.
In 1985, and due to political reasons the artist was expelled from Kuwait. He settled in London and continued to work for the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas.
His work was published daily in Cairo, Beirut, Kuwait, Tunis, Abu Dhabi, London and Paris in publications ranging from far Right to far Left. He is thought to have been the highest paid cartoonist in the Arab world.
Naji al-Ali had no political affiliations and the absence of slogans and dogma in his work brought both success and criticism. He was opposed to terrorism and the absence of democracy and, not belonging to any political group, tried to be a true representative of Arab public opinion.
"As soon as I was aware of what was going on, all the havoc in our region, I felt I had to do something, to contribute somehow. First I tried politics, to join a party, I marched in demonstrations, but that was not really me. The sharp cries I felt within me needed a different medium to express what I was going through. It was some time in the fifties that I started drawing on the walls of our camp. During that period, the refugees had begun to develop some political awareness as a reaction to what had been taking place in the region: a revolution in Egypt, a war of independence in Algeria, things were brewing all around the Arab world. My job I felt was to speak up for those people, my people who are in the camps, in Egypt, in Algeria, the simple Arabs all over the region who have very few outlets to express their points of view. I felt my job was to incite them. The function of a political cartoonist, as I see it, is to provide a new vision.”
Few regimes or political groups in the region escaped his satirical drawings. His cartoons portrayed the bitter struggle and plight of the Palestinian people against Israeli occupation and oppression. He also campaigned against the absence of democracy, widespread corruption and gross inequality in the Arab world. He was said to have antagonized virtually everyone in the Middle East, Arab, and Jew, conservative and radical alike. He believed his period of work in Beirut was the best part of his career and that his periods of exile in Kuwait and the UK restricted his creativeness in ways he could not understand and counter. He missed the inspiration of the reality of the refugee camps in southern Lebanon. Naji al-Alis philosophy can perhaps be best encapsulated in his explanation about Hanzala, the little boys who appears as a spectator in each of his cartoons:
"This child, as you can see is neither beautiful, spoilt, nor even well-fed. He is barefoot like manychildren in refugee camps. He is actually ugly and no woman would wish to have a child like him. However, those who came to know Hanzala, as I discovered and later adopted him because he is affectionate, honest, outspoken, and a bum. He is an icon that stands to watch me from slipping. And his hands behind his back are a symbol of rejection of all the present negative tides in our region."
Hanzala is now the official logo of the Commission for Freedom and Justice Through Humor, a recently created arm of WATCH and an affiliate of UNESCO.
Censorship
Naji al-Ali was frequently detained by police and continually censored. He received many death threats during his life. Because of his work he was said to be one of the most wanted men in the Middle East and this forced him to leave Lebanon and work in Kuwait and London. He emphatically refused to speak about his oppressors and those who might censor his work; he drew them instead.
The Death Of Naji al-Ali
On Wednesday July 22nd, 1987 he was shot in the head by a lone gunman as he was going to work at the Al-Qabas offices in Ives Street, Chelsea. After five weeks in a coma on a life support machine in a St Stephens and Charing Cross hospitals in London, he died at 1am on Saturday 30th August at the age of 51.
"When I was younger I thought I would actually be able to help achieve all our aspirations for independence, unity, justice. Many died for those aspirations and things are only getting worse. That, certainly, can make one; despair. But more than ever, I feel a sense of duty to go on doing what I have to and can do."
He was posthumously awarded the annual Golden Pen award of the International Federation of Newspaper Publishers (FIEJ) in 1988. This award is given to recognize outstanding actions in favour of freedom of expression and the jury was composed of publishers from 28 member countries. Individual publishers in Brazil, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand and Pakistan are associatemembers as are 13 leading western news agencies.
References:
i) Invaluable help was kindly provided by the late Naji al-Alis son
ii) The quotes from Naji al-Ali are taken from an interview published in Index on Censorship in
1984, sub-titled From Lebanon to Kuwait, the cartoonist has so far survived attempts to stop his work.
iii) Details from reports in The Times newspaper 23/07/87, 24/07/87, 27/07/87 & 12/09/87.
iv) witty World International Cartoon Magazine, No 16, summer 1993