Absent Yet Ever Present

Author: Jihan El Helou

This book documents much of the life of the activist Hanna Ibrahim Mikhail (Abu Omar), and his intellectual, political, and media contributions to the Palestinian Revolution. It includes many of Abu Omar's lectures, educational and mobilization writings, and testimonies from his family members, colleagues from his student and professional days, and comrades in the Palestinian Revolution. It also features articles written about him and reviews of his book: (Politics and Revelation: Al-Mawardi and Beyond). The book contains the only accurate and detailed account of the search for him and his companions, who disappeared after sailing from Beirut to Tripoli on a mission to protect Palestinian camps in 1976, at the height of the Lebanese Civil War. Our Arab homeland, with its immense oil wealth and crucial strategic location, constitutes a primary target for fierce imperialism; likewise, the Zionist colony in Palestine serves as an outpost for imperialism to crush any hostile movement. – Abu Omar "Hanna Mikhail's entire life was focused on a penetrating radicalism that was not content with the vulgar clichés of politics as business projects, nor with the empty slogans of celebratory demagoguery, and despised incompetence and favoritism. Hanna Mikhail supported principles and ideals not as abstract and illusory ideas, but as concrete manifestations in daily life."