Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
12 August
UK EXPELS ISRAELIS AFTER LONDON ASSASSINATION OF NAJI ALI
On this day in 1987, Ismail Siwan, a Hull College researcher, was arrested in Hull following the murder in a London street of popular Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali on July 22. Assault rifles, bomb-making equipment, explosive and grenades intended for terrorist attacks around Europe were found in the flat. Siwan, a Palestinian Mossad agent, was jailed for 11 years. In response, British Prime Minister Thatcher expelled Israeli diplomats and closed down Mossad operations in the UK.
تم طرد عميل الموساد الإسرائيلي من بريطانيا اثر اغتيال رسام الكاريكاتيرالفلسطيني ناجي العلي
12 أغسطس
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام1987 ، ألقي القبض في مدينة هال على إسماعيل سيوان ،الباحث في كلية هال، عقب اغتيال رسام الكاريكاتير الفلسطيني الشهير ناجي العلي في أحد شوارع لندن في 22 يوليو / تموز. تم العثور في شقة اسماعيل على بنادق هجومية ،معدات صنع القنابل ،المتفجرات والقنابل اليدوية بهدف استخدامها في عمليات ارهابية في جميع انحاء اوروبا. تم سجن سيوان، و هو عميل موساد فلسطيني، لمدة 11 عامًا. رداً على ذلك، قامت رئيسة الوزراء البريطاني تاتشر بطرد الدبلوماسيين الإسرائيليين وأغلاق مكتب عمليات الموساد في المملكة المتحدة.
Cartoons of Naji Al Ali
Naji Al-Ali wrote: “The child Handala is my signature, everyone asks me about him wherever I go. I gave birth to this child in the Gulf and I presented him to the people. His name is Handala and he has promised the people that he will remain true to himself. I drew him as a child who is not beautiful; his hair is like the hair of a hedgehog who uses his thorns as a weapon. Handala is not a fat, happy, relaxed, or pampered child. He is barefooted like the refugee camp children, and he is an icon that protects me from making mistakes. Even though he is rough, he smells of amber. His hands are clasped behind his back as a sign of rejection at a time when solutions are presented to us the American way."
The timeless work of Naji al-Ali
Cartoonist Naji al-Ali was a towering figure in the Palestinian cultural and political scene. His daily political drawings were a knife-twisting, gut-wrenching journey into how Palestinians perceived their predicament. Toufic Haddad reviews A Child in Palestine: The Cartoons of Naji al-Ali for The Electronic Intifada.
Naji al-Ali: The timeless conscience of Palestine
On July 22 1987 at five in the afternoon, Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al-Ali parked his car in southwest London, and walked a few meters towards the offices of the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas where he worked. He was shot in the head by a gunman. After five weeks in a coma on a life support machine Naji al-Ali died on August 30, 1987 at the age of 49. Naji al-Ali is still the most popular artist in the Arab world, loved for his defense of the ordinary people, and for his criticism of repression and despotism. His unrelenting cartoons exposed the brutality of the Israeli army and the hypocrisy of the PLO, earning him many powerful enemies.
The year before Naji Al Ali's murder, a Mossad agent left an envelope containing eight British passports in a telephone booth in Germany. The passports were forged for the Israeli Embassy in London, but were discovered. Britain, furious, demanded and obtained a promise from Jerusalem that Israel would never do such a thing again – a promise broken 24 years later to murder Palestinian Mahmoud Al Mabhouh in DubaI in January 2010. Who knows how many other times Mossad killers used, but didn't absent-mindedly leave, such tools of their trade in a phone box?
n 1988 Israeli diplomats were expelled from London after using a Palestinian, Ismail Siwan, as a double agent. When Siwan, was arrested in cennection with the murder of Naji Al Ali a cache of arms was found in his flat in Hull. He was sentenced to 11 years in jail. When Siwan and another man confessed that they worked for both the PLO and the Israeli intelligence, that Mossad had advance knowledge of the Naji Al Ali murder and had refused to pass this information to their British counterparts, Britain retaliated by expelling three Israeli diplomats, one of whom was the embassy attache identified as the handler for the two agents. Then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher closed Mossad’s London base.
4-minute video: Naji Ali, defiant Palestinian
https://youtu.be/PWD2o-jOLRk