July 8 marks fifty years since the murder of Ghassan Kanafani, the Palestinian writer, hero, and martyr who died in a Beirut car bombing. The assassination was carried out by Israeli state agents hoping — in 1972, like today — to fatally weaken the struggle for Palestinian liberation.

Yet half a century later, Kanafani’s legacy lives on — with his legacy also leaving many lessons. One is that the Israeli state and its American handlers have always feared the voice of liberation and democracy — and so, too, socialism — in Palestine more than religiously motivated struggle. Another related lesson was reaffirmed by the recent execution of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli snipers. It again showed that while Zionism’s apologists are quick to deny the Palestinian right to armed resistance, they can be even more hostile toward those Palestinians who have given everything to communicate their hopes, struggle, and simple truth in words and stories.

The apologias for the Israeli state at the moment that Kanafani was murdered resorted to another ever-dependable feature of its methods, by diverting attention to the then-recent attack on Lod Airport by members of the Japanese Red Army. That a Palestinian author in Lebanon was deemed a legitimate target in response to an attack carried out by Japanese militants inside Israeli-occupied Palestine is only further indictment of the strange contortions used to justify Zionist brutality.