British police are re-opening the unsolved murder case of Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali, who was shot in London, Great Britain on July 22nd 1987 and died of his wounds on August 29th 1987.
When he was shot, Naji al-Ali was walking to the London offices of the Kuwaiti al-Qabas newspaper. He had left his car nearby and had made his way on foot to the St Ives street in Chelsea when he was attacked at 17:10 local time.
The man who shot him had been following him for forty seconds according to eye-witnesses.
The killer, a 'Middle Eastern looking" man of about 25 years of age seemed to have an accomplice. This accomplice was another "Middle Eastern looking" man in his fifties.
The sources differ at this point: Either the accomplice alone or with the shooter escaped in a "silver Mercedes". In some sources the the killer himself escaped on foot, while the accomplice took care of the gun.
The gun, 7.62 millimeter Tokarev - originally produced in Soviet Union but later made in many countries - was found in 1989.
ISMAIL SOWAN, THE DOUBLE AGENT
During the original investigation the British police arrested in Hull a Palestinian student named Ismail Sowan(b. 1959), on whose possession was found arms and explosives.
Under interrogation Sowan claimed that he was a Mossad double-agent inside PLO. He claimed Mossad had recruited him as a teenager in 1977 in the occupied West Bank and told him to join PLO.
Sowan claimed that he learned about a plot to kill Naji al-Ali and had informed his handlers in Tel Aviv. He was sentenced to eleven years in prison for possession of explosives on November 2nd 1988. Sowan was released early in 1994 and deported to Jordan, whose nationality he held.
The lack of further arrests based on Sowan's claims have never been explained well. A second person claiming to work for Mossad was also arrested, but not charged.
Naji Salim Hussain al-Ali became a refugee when his own home village of Ash Sharaja (where he was born in 1936) was destroyed by the Zionists in 1948. Nowadays on its ruins stands an Israeli town called Ilanya.
His family ended up living in Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp near Sidon in Lebanon, and later al-Ali also lived in Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, working first at orchards and then as car mechanic, living two years in Saudi Arabia. in 1960-1961 he was part of a group producing a sort-lived political journal "Sarkha"("Cry!"). During his time he was arrested for political reasons by the Lebanese government.
Naji al-Ali's first cartoons were published in 1961 by fellow Palestinian left-wing intellectual, author and revolutionary member of PFLP Ghassan Kanafani(1936-1972), who was murdered with his niece by Israel with a car bomb in Beirut.
Naji al-Ali went on to create the iconic symbol of Palestinian refugees, Handala, the boy who won't grow up until he can return to Palestine. To the cartoonist himself Handala reflected the boy who was forced to leave Ash Sharaja:
“I am still that age today and I feel that I can recall and sense every bush, every stone, every house and every tree I passed when I was a child in Palestine.”
In Naji al-Ali's cartoons Handala witnesses the crimes of Israel, the sufferings of the Palestinian people, the duplicity and avarice of corrupt Arab leaders and the use of religion to silence voices of women.
Handala has also become a symbol of the BDS Movement, which seeks the end of the occupation, equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel and a right of return to the refugees through peaceful means: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.
In his exile that would last a life-time Naji al-Ali produced 40 000 cartoons.
In 1988 the International Federation of Newspaper Publishers gave him posthumously the Golden Pen award, declaring him to have been "one of the best cartoonists since the 18th century".
THE BRITISH MEDIA AND THE MURDER OF NAJI AL-ALI
The British media back in 1987 and still now in 2017 have tried to mention Israel as little as possible in their articles. Which, in itself is telling. What is not said or seen is often as important what is.
Instead of Israel we see BBC back in 1987 and now in 2017 blaming - based on unnamed "Middle Eastern commentators" (read Israeli media, politicians and the handlers of BBC journalists and executives) - Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, "Arab states", "a Kuwaiti gang" and PLO.
Instead of Israel - bane of Palestinian intellectuals and cartoonists then and today - BBC and rest of the British media want to plant in their audience the idea that either Palestinians killed their greatest cartoonists who gave voice to the refugees' plight or that it was otherwise a case of "Arabs killing Arabs".
This doesn't mean that Israel necessarily did kill Naji al-Ali, but it does show how the British media wanted and did avoid bringing that possibility up, back in 1987 and now. Instead the British media has spent thirty years running defensive action for Israel whenever Naji al-Ali's murder comes up.
Perhaps some authoritarian Arab regime killed Naji al-Ali, perhaps some "Kuwaiti gang", but what is clear is that BBC, The Guardian and the rest very much suspect that it was Israel who did it based on their reaction.
The reaction of the British state itself is telling; if Naji al-Ali would have been killed by Iran, PLO or any Palestinian faction or at least there being any real evidence of the sort - then Great Britain would have taken all possible political advantage of it.
Not to speak of Israel's regime, which would have exploited Naji al-Ali's death at the hands of anyone but itself to the fullest.
Other possible culprits brought up have been the Phalangists of Lebanon - still the darlings of the "West" as "anti-Iranian reformers" - who were then allies of Israel. In 1982 the Phalangists massacred up to 3500 Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps while Israel's army besieged the camps.
It was threats from them which had in 1983 made Naji al-Ali to move from Lebanon to Kuwait, from which he was forced to leave not because of "a Kuwaiti gang" according to himself, but pressure from Saudi Arabia, another favourite of the "West".
THE LEGACY OF NAJI AL-ALI
The saying "revolutionaries never die" holds true of Naji al-Ali also; he was a committed left-wing revolutionary who used art to fight for his people and for a better world overall. Pen was his weapon.
It's not widely known especially in the "West", but cartoon is a popular and respected genre among Palestinians, with cartoonists giving voice to the feelings, yearnings and disappointments of the people.
Israel fears these modern sons and daughters of Naji al-Ali, who have picked up and multiplied his pen, and through whose work Handala too still shares and witnesses in the tribulations, sufferings and victories of the Palestinian people.
Just recently, amidst the fighting against extremist Islamists in Ain al-Helweh refugee camp in Lebanon, an art exhibition made by local Palestinian refugee youths was opened in his honour. In his childhood Naji al-Ali had lived his family in Ain al-Helweh.
Whoever shot Naji al-Ali, and the ones who send him to kill him, failed. We hope that they can bring to justice, as remote as that chance has been, but they have already been defeated.
