[News] A culture erased: Gaza’s main public library destroyed in Israeli bombing

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-gaza-public-library-destroyed-bombing>
A culture erased: Gaza’s main public library destroyed in Israeli bombing
By Nadda Osman - November 28, 2023

Palestinians <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine> inspecting
the destruction wreaked by the Israeli military have been dismayed to find
Gaza’s main public library in ruins following at least seven weeks of
bombing.

A temporary truce came into effect on 24 November, with the cessation of
bombing allowing Palestinians to see loved ones, attempt to find food and
return to their homes to check up on the damage.

Authorities in Gaza announced on Monday that the pause in fighting has
revealed that Gaza City’s main public library was among the many civilian
buildings destroyed during the war.

Officials have decried the bombing of the building as a “deliberate attempt
to destroy historical documents and books”.

Photos of the destroyed building, with books scattered around on the floor,
were released by the Municipality of Gaza.

The library was in regular use by members of the community, including
schoolchildren, before the start of the war on 7 October.

Video footage shared by Storyful,
<https://uk.news.yahoo.com/gaza-public-library-destroyed-israeli-182955120.html?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKp62l-7sq1loSe7_geQSW_2Ye8lkSbvhDsSOlWGvPgoBui68EfPMq6Qxgk1UDstth627u8BERY6_950FwYTC_--zOUVoOtmZPFwejMOeNZ7DBL2Cwbk5KRKCg91TawVsneQ-dQag45n6HbL8Px2Pbc3p5GL2sKwOIywPE4PFRHB&guccounter=1%C2%A0>an
intelligence agency and open source intelligence and verification platform,
showed the destroyed building and the collapsed bookshelves inside.

Municipal authorities in Gaza have called for the intervention of the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco)
to “intervene and protect cultural centres and condemn the occupation’s
targeting of these humanitarian facilities protected under international
humanitarian law”.
Erasure of culture

Literary Hub,
<https://lithub.com/gazas-main-public-library-has-been-destroyed/> a daily
literary website launched in 2015, compared the bombing of the library to
the 1992 attack on the library in Sarajevo, where Bosnian Serb forces,
stationed in the hills above the city, razed the National and University
Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the ground.

“The targeted destruction of Gaza’s primary public library is a stark
reminder that genocide is about more than just the premeditated mass
extinguishing of human life; it’s also about the calculated, and often
vindictive, destruction of a people’s culture, language, history, and
shared sites of community,” Literary Hub said in a statement.

They added that Israel’s destruction of cultural and historical sites in
Gaza was a “way for Israel to erase all evidence of Palestinian life and
Palestinian humanity”.

Online, people shared their feelings of sadness at the loss of the library,
coining the world "culturecide" to show that a "cultural genocide" is
underway.

“As someone whose sister was killed after trying to save books from the
burning National Library in besieged Sarajevo in '92, I ache at such vile
acts of destruction. Books have real and symbolic meaning: once gone,
people feel lost and disconnected,” one social media user wrote.
<https://twitter.com/amila295/status/1729221890281996377>

Since the start of the war, over 60,000 buildings have been damaged in
Gaza, including most of the buildings in the north.

While the bombing has destroyed 56,450 housing units, according to Euro-Med
Monitor, places of worship, media offices, hospitals and universities have
also been damaged.

The Islamic University of Gaza was one of the buildings bombed by Israel,
which the Israeli army alleged was a “central training centre for Hamas
engineers and a training institution for the development and production of
weapons”.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/israel-palestine-war-gaza-city-rimal-israel-turned-wasteland>

My neighbourhood was vibrant and beautiful. Israel turned it into a
wasteland

Videos shared online showed Israeli military fighter jets targeting the
Gaza City campus. According to Euro-Med Monitor, at least 266 schools have
also been destroyed in the bombings.

The rights group highlighted that Gaza's oldest mosque, the Al-Omari Grand
Mosque, famed for its minaret dating back 1,400 years, has been damaged
along with three historic churches, among them the Church of Saint
Porphyrius, which was originally constructed in around 407 AD.

“Various cultural institutions have also been targeted by Israeli attacks,
including at least six cultural centres and five bookstores which are now
destroyed; most notably, these are the Orthodox Cultural Centre, Al-Qarara
Cultural Museum (which was built in 1958), and the Rafah Museum,” said
Euro-Med Monitor <https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/5965>.

This is not the first time bookshops and libraries have been targeted in
Israeli bombing in Gaza.

In May 2021, a bookshop named Iqraa al-Jadeed in Gaza
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gaza-bookshop-demolished-fundraising-effort-back-feet%C2%A0>
was reduced to rubble when Israeli jets pummelled the store during an
11-day bombing campaign.

A video of the owner, Shaaban Aslem, tearfully describing the sacrifices he
made to open his shop in front of its wreckage quickly went viral, gaining
the attention of thousands of people globally.

“I kept building it up, book by book, until it was complete," Aslem told
Middle East Eye at the time. "The bookshop supported my family, and my
extended family, around 22 people.”
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