A Child in Palestine: The Cartoons of Naji al-Ali
With urgency and wit, this political art remains a bastion for Palestinian liberation and as pertinent as ever.
In These Times Editors
At age 10, Naji al-Ali was among those forced to flee their homes after the Nakba struck Palestine in 1948. He grew up in the Ein El Hilweh refugee camp in south Lebanon, and the harrowing experiences he faced during adolescence and later in adulthood — during the Lebanese Civil War and the 1982 Israeli invasion — became material for his now famous political cartoons, which examine Israeli brutality through the eyes of a fictitious refugee child, Handala.
In 1983, al-Ali moved to Kuwait following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and was expelled two years later for publishing these cartoons. He then made a home in London with his wife and five children. He continued drawing for the Al-Qabas newspaper until, in 1987, an unknown gunman killed him outside of the newspaper’s Chelsea office.
With urgency and wit, Naji al-Ali’s art remains a bastion for Palestinian liberation and as pertinent as ever. Here, In These Times is humbled to share an excerpt from A Child in Palestine: The Cartoons of Naji al-Ali, published by Verso Books.
