A Talk About Israeli Damage to Archives, Libraries, and Museums in Gaza

By ArabLit Staff

FEBRUARY 8, 2024 — This week, Librarians and Archivists with Palestine –an all-volunteer network of self-defined librarians, archivists, and information workers in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination — released a preliminary report titled “Israeli Damage to Archives, Libraries, and Museums in Gaza, October 2023–January 2024.” The report builds on previous reports issued by Heritage for Peace, the Palestinian Ministry of Culture, the Arab Regional Group at the International Council of Monuments and Sites, focusing on the losses libraries, archives, and museums, including the loss of library and information workers.

We emailed with Maggie Schreiner, lead LAP researcher on the report.

Reading through the report, and also having seen previous reports, it’s clear that many irreplaceable treasures have been destroyed. There are also the difficult-to-quantify personal libraries, which must be now lost in the tens of thousands. One thing I had a hard time getting a sense of was whether anything remains? Is this the entirety of libraries and archives in Gaza?

Maggie Schreiner: Our report doesn’t include all the libraries and archives in Gaza. As you point out, there are significant categories missing entirely, including personal collections, as well as children’s libraries, and school libraries. Since publishing the report, we’ve learned about one children’s library in Beit Hanoun which was destroyed in early October. This library, a project of IBBY Palestine, was also destroyed in Israeli bombing in 2014. Additionally, we also know that all eleven universities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since October 7. This report includes instances where there’s documented evidence that the library specifically was damaged, or that the entire campus was destroyed, presumably including the libraries. However, it’s likely that the libraries at many of the seven universities not represented in the report were damaged or destroyed as well.

The incomplete nature of the report demonstrates how incredibly hard it is to find out information about the status of these institutions currently. The majority of information we have emerged during the week of ceasefire in November, which allowed Gaza’s residents to take stock of the extent of destruction, and not just focus on immediate survival. The immense loss of life and the almost wholesale destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure means that gathering comprehensive information is impossible. I hope that it’s not the entirety of libraries in archives in Gaza, but certainly the scale of destruction is hard to comprehend.

As your report notes, the intentional destruction of heritage is a war crime. As librarians and archivists…what does it mean for a population to lose their access to literature, to knowledge, to libraries as community spaces, to manuscript heritage? 

MS: I think these losses occur on multiple levels. Of course, the loss of manuscript heritage, as well as archaeological and architectural history, will make it much harder in the future to understand the long timeframe of Gaza’s importance in the region. The loss of these materials will, in a literal sense,  limit the stories that we are able to tell about Palestine. This is accompanied by the loss of book collections and community spaces. These losses will impact the ability of children and adults to learn about themselves and the world. The loss of book collections represents not only the loss of the actual physical books, but also the efforts of Gaza’s librarians to acquire these books, to catalog and care for them, and to build communities around these book collections.

Who are you hoping will circulate the report? Are people welcome to print, distribute, and re-post it elsewhere? And what impact would you like it to have?

MS: We hope that this report will travel as far and wide as possible! As an organization, Librarians and Archivists with Palestine understands the erasure of Palestinian culture and history to be a long-standing Israeli tactic of war and occupation. Through this report, we hope to show how this same logic is functioning during the current bombing of Gaza. Furthermore, we have found that discussing libraries, archives, and information access in Palestine can be an important entry point for people who are new to thinking about Israeli occupation of Palestine. I hope that this report will allow Palestinians and their allies to approach their work with a more comprehensive understanding of the role of cultural heritage, while also bringing new people, perhaps those who are particularly interested in libraries and archives, into solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for self determination.

The report states, “The destruction of libraries represents the loss of not only book collections, but the efforts of Gaza’s librarians to acquire, care for, and provide access to reading materials, despite Israel’s ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip.” Can you talk a little bit about how difficult it has been for Gaza’s librarians and archivists to collect and care for reading material in the last two decades? 

MS: Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip since 2007 has had a significant impact on the availability of books. Shipments of books are often quarantined or prevented by Israel, with the justification that books might be used for military means. As a result, many book shipments never arrive in Gaza, or arrive damaged after weeks in Israeli quarantine. Additionally, book shipments are often sent to the West Bank instead of to Gaza, despite the fact that it is very difficult for Palestinians in Gaza to obtain permission to travel. In instances where it is possible to import books directly from Israel, these books are often unaffordable to Gaza’s residents. Poet and founder of Gaza’s Edward Said Public Library, Mosab Abu Toha, spoke further about these challenges at the 2020 American Libraries Association conference.

Some reports have focused on buildings, but it feels important that this report also includes the librarians, archivists, and other information workers who have been killed in ongoing bombardment, starvation, and aggression. Each of them is also a library of sorts, a key to the maintenance of cultural knowledge. Can you talk about why you wanted to include information workers in this report?

MS: Including information about the librarians and archivists who have been killed felt absolutely critical, because these individuals are, in a broad sense, our colleagues. As information workers ourselves, we know how much knowledge people hold about their communities and the collections that they work with. The loss of these individuals also impacts the cultural heritage of Palestine. Additionally, given the immense scale of death in Gaza, it felt important to acknowledge the loss of human beings, and not just the loss of archival materials and library collections. This was also one of the hardest aspects of the report to research, and it feels likely very incomplete. I would like to acknowledge and honor all the librarians and archivists who have lost their lives in Gaza since October 7th, not just those included in this report.

Read the report at librarianswithpalestine.org/gaza-report-2024/:

Israeli Damage to Archives, Libraries, and Museums in Gaza, October 2023–January 2024