In 1987, Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al-Ali was murdered by an unknown assassin. This 52-minute documentary directed by Kasim Abid traces his life and work from his birth in Galilee to his death in London. It examines the forces that shaped Naji as an artist and as a human being, and shows how his experiences mirror those of other exiled Palestinians.
At around 17:10 on Wednesday 22 July 1987, Naji al-Ali, a political cartoonist for the Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas, was shot in the back of the head as he walked to his office in Ives Street, Knightsbridge, London.
Al-Ali, 51, was taken to hospital, where he remained in a coma for 37 days until he died on 29 August 1987. The cartoonist had received several death threats in the years prior to his murder.
In 2017, British police reopened the murder case, but the investigations yielded no new leads.
The full documentary can be seen on Youtube thanks to its director.
Naji al-Ali was born in 1936 in the Palestinian village of Ash Shajara (Galilee).
In 1948, Ash Shajara was one of 480 villages destroyed in what is known as the "Nakba", or catastrophe. The Nakba is the devastation of Palestine at the creation of the Israeli state. Palestinians lost more than half of their land, massacres took place, creating some 750,000 refugees. Naji al-Ali was 10 years old when he and his family were expelled from Palestine to the Ein Al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon. In the early 1960s he emigrated to Kuwait.
In 1974, civil war broke out in Lebanon and Naji al-Ali returned to join the Palestinian Fedayeen, entrenched in Beirut. When the PLO negotiated with Israel for the withdrawal of its army, the Lebanese Phalanges began the persecution of Palestinian refugees, culminating in the massacre of Sabra and Chatila, two camps on the outskirts of Beirut. Naji al-Ali hid for six months in the city's tunnels before finally escaping to Kuwait.
From there he denounced the PLO leadership as bearing indirect responsibility for the Sabra and Chatila massacres. In response, the PLO leadership and several Arab newspapers organised a major press campaign against Nayi al-Ali, which took the form of public acts of repudiation. Eventually, he was expelled from Kuwait. No other Arab state was willing to accept him and he went into exile in London.(1)
From 1975 until his death in 1987, Naji al-Ali drew numerous cartoons denouncing the situation of Palestinian refugees.
His character, Handala, always with his back to the viewer (interpreted as a nod to those who turn their backs on Palestinian demands), symbolises the 10-year-old refugee boy he was and who became an icon for Palestinian refugees. To this day, he remains a powerful symbol of the Palestinian people's struggle and resistance for justice and self-determination.
