THE ANGRY ARAB: Expelled from US in 1969 for His Support of Civil Rights:
Who is George Hajjar?
February 1, 2021
Almost unknown in the U.S., Hajjar heckled Ben-Gurion, joined the civil
rights movement in the South, and lost his job with the PLO for allegedly
insulting Arafat.
By As`ad AbuKhalil
Special to Consortium News
Most Americansand most Arabshave not heard of George Hajjar (he used to
spell it Haggar when he lived in Canada and the U.S.), one of the most
courageous academics ever.
This is a man who gave up many jobs and income security for his firm belief
in his principles and dedication to revolution. Hajjars career represents
an unusual path of an Arab academicor any academic.
As is well-known, Arab intellectuals in the West (like Edward Said, Hisham
Sharabi, and Ibrahim Abou Lughod) only became vocal about Palestine after
the 1967 defeat, which shook the conscience of Arabs worldwide. Hajjar, to
his credit was vocal about Palestine from very early on, and never wavered
in his fierce opposition to Zionism as soon as he stepped foot in North
America in the early 1950s.
As a young man in Canada in 1960, he chased David Ben-Gurion in Canadian
airports to heckle him and to protest the occupation of Palestine. He
realized that Palestine is the defining cause and was warned early on by
Canadian academics that Israel is a sacred cow in the West, and that being a
communist is much easier in comparison. Hajjar was both: an avowed radical
Marxist and a fierce anti-Zionist.
This brave academic revolutionary was fired from every university job he
ever held, except his last job at Lebanese University in the Biqa`.
Following Marxs dictum, Hajjar (who studied political theory) was not
satisfied in interpreting the world; he wanted to change it, and he did
change the world around him in every period of his life, and contributed to
the Palestinian revolution.
If academics are pleased to hear applause at the end of their talks, Hajjar
was more ambitious. He wanted to lead his audience to revolution in the
1960s in Canada and the U.S.: he was a leader of union and student revolts
at several universities. He founded one of the early Canadian Arab political
organizations.
Hajjar tells his life story in his book Revolutionary Wanderer in a Changing
World (Arabic, published by Dar Al-Farabi). Hajjar grew up in a poor family
in Biqa` (Eastern Lebanon) and described in his memoir political
developments around him in the 1930s and 1940s in uncompromising language.
He rightly refers to Lebanons independence heroes as tails of colonialism
(p. 23).
His father sought to turn Hajjar into a monk but young Hajjar did not last,
and fled the monastery on foot until he returned home. This is a man who
could not be tamed by governments, political parties, or religious
authorities.
In 1952, Hajjar immigrated to Canada and worked as a waiter and shoe shiner.
He learned English and excelled academically. He is frank in informing
readers that his professors were shocked at his fierce revolutionary style
in research papers (p. 70). Academia works to harmonize and tame students
language so that we all sound the same and not pose a threat to the existing
order that universities train us to obey and serve.
Hajjar entered Canadian party politics and protested inside the Canadian
parliament in 1961 against Israeli nuclear weapons (even today, just compare
the enormous Western media attention to non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons
program to the existing massive nuclear arsenal of Israel).
His Canadian fiancé was alarmed at his revolutionary activities especially
when the daily hometown paper carried a picture of Hajjar holding a sign
against Nazi generals in reference to the U.S. war in Vietnam (Hajjar
refers to that as political entertainment (p. 86).
In 1963, he had a son who he named Bertrand, after Bertrand Russell. Hajjar
earned his PhD in political theory from Columbia University in 1966, and got
a job at Waterloo Lutheran University, but he was subsequently fired (or his
contract not renewed) purely for his revolutionary approach and activities.
Hajjar was a pioneer in Canadian Arab political organization at a time when
Arabs in North American were too afraid to express their political beliefs
for fear of arrest and deportation.
Hajjars reputation spread in North America (he was a featured speaker in
the conference of Arab Student Union in Long Beach in 1970) and the
predominantly black, Southern University in New Orleans (SUNO) extended an
invitation to him to join its political department. He quickly became a
leader of the black student rebellion, on and off campus.
A student protest ensued and Haggar was fully trusted by the students, who
made him their quasi-spokesperson. Conservative elements on campus started
maligning Hajjar and undermining his revolutionary credentials as the leader
of the protest. He was called White and Hajjar explained that he never
considered himself white and asserted that he identifies as a brown person.
The protesters confronted Louisiana Governor John McKiethen, who was then
held hostage (it was ironic that Hajjar, who had no U.S. citizenship and
not even a Green Card, assured the governor that as long as he stayed with
him during the protest, he would be safe). Hajjar quickly became an enemy of
the state. The police chief of New Orleans addressed Hajjar on camera on TV,
while Haggar watched and laughed.
Hajjar reports in his book the scene of helicopters and police cars going
after him before his arrest. Adam Fairclough, in his Race and Democracy: The
Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972, acknowledges that the history
of the civil rights movement in Louisiana recognizes the role of Hajjar at
Southern University and says that conservative black faculty members made
blatantly racist appeals to the students in an effort to discredit Hajjar,
an Arab-American political science professor whose fiery denunciations of
Fascist niggers, house niggers, black bourgeois masochists, [and] white
liberals had given him notoriety and influence (p. 433).
SUNO fired Hajjar and he was deported from the U.S. in 1969. Congressman
Gerald Ford railed at this Arab-American academic who held a U.S. governor
hostage.
Return to Lebanon
Hajjars reputation grew and Basil Kubaisi, an Iraqi who was active in the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) while pursuing his PhD
in Canada, and who would later be assassinated by Mossad in 1973 introduced
him to PFLP circles in Beirut. Hajjars return to Lebanon launched a new
revolutionary career for Hajjar.
He met Ghassan Kanafani, Wadi` Haddad, and Leila Khaled among other leaders
of the Popular Front and other Palestinian resistance organizations. Hajjar
was interested in introducing the Palestinian cause to the world through a
biography of Leila Khaled. But Hajjar did not hit it off with the PFLP crowd
in Beirut.
He came across as arrogant and supercilious (as one contemporary of Hajjar
reported to me when I recently asked him about Hajjar). Kanafani and others
made critical remarks of a Hajjar manuscript and he angrily published it in
the UK (under the title My People Shall Live, and it became a best seller in
several languages).
Hajjar also wanted to join the ranks of the PFLP leadership but without
going through the organizational hierarchical ladder. The PFLP refused, but
Wadi` Haddad was impressed with Hajjar and recruited him to work as a
full-time cadre, and utilized his services in his operations. Hajjar
mentions the Lufthansa hijacking into Mogadishu in 1977.
His role was presumably strictly in analyzing the political context and
drafting the political manifesto for the operation. It should be noted that
the mother organization, the PFLP, distanced itself as early as 1971 from
international operations and condemned the harm they do to the Palestinian
cause and the potential risk to civilians. The violent act involved
hijacking a German commercial airliner and demanding the release of
Palestinian (and German Rote Armee Fraktion) prisoners. It failed and most
of the hijackers were killed as well as the German co-pilot.
After the organization fallout with the PFLP leadership, Haddad tasked
Hajjar with writing a book on Ghassan Kanafani after his assassination in
1972. Again, the PFLP leadership did not approve of Hajjars account
especially since he used the occasion to blast the accommodationist trends
of the PLO (he even insinuated that Kanafani would have committed suicide
had he witnessed the concessions that started with the PLOs conference in
1974). [This book was never published and I am currently in talks with
Hajjar about its ultimate release].
Hajjar worked at the Palestine Research Center but his personality clashed
with that of its president, Anis Sayigh, who managed the center extremely
tightly and rather formally, and with great discipline. Hajjar also
suggested that he was targeted by Palestinian intellectuals, Hisham Sharabi
and Ibrahim Abou Lughod, because he stood firmly against the two-state
solution and prophetically warned against a Jericho republic in 1974 after
attending the PNCs 12th conference.
The radical reputation of Hajjar swept Beirut and leaders of the Fath
(Fatah) Movement summoned him to a meeting and he warned of an incoming wave
of repression in Lebanon (shortly before the right-wing militias sparked the
civil war) and called for burning of the fashionable Hamra street.
Hajjar in his later years.
Fath leaders were horrified at the suggestion. Hajjar was then recruited to
work for the newly formed Joint Information Committee of the PLO but he also
did not last there because he was accused of insulting Yasser Arafat.
Hajjar then moved to Kuwait where he taught at Kuwait University and wrote
for its progressive publications. But his stay in Kuwait did not last either
and he was fired and expelled for cursing the Saudi royal family. He then
joined the Institute of Palestine Studies at Baghdad University where he
renewed contacts with Wadi` Haddad.
Unsurprisingly, Hajjar drew a gruesome picture of Baghdad under Saddam and
wrote: Baghdad of the Arabs have become Baghdad of mercenaries,
opportunists, and vendors of illusory publications (p. 278). In 1977, he
participated in launching the The Arab Revolutionary Movement but he
resisted an attempt by Carlos (the Jackal) to co-opt his movement on behalf
of Saddam Husayn.
Hajjar subsequently moved to Algeria in 1978 but he quickly clashed with
those on college campuses who resisted his Arabization campaign. He was also
then expelled from Algeria and returned to Lebanon where he has lived since,
and taught at Lebanese University.
He wrote and made speeches and was an early advocate of armed resistance
against the Israeli invasion of 1982. (See his book, The Israeli Invasion of
Lebanon and Armed Resistance, in Arabic). He coined the slogan:
Palestinians of today, and Armenians of tomorrow if we dont fight.
Such was the long revolutionary career of Hajjar, and his revolutionary tone
from recent exchanges has not softened one bit. It is a shame that neither
Americans nor many Arabs know of the revolutionary contributions and work of
Hajjar Hajjara man who paid dearly for his sacrifices for the cause.
