Israel’s attack on Palestine’s libraries, universities is an attack on academia everywhere

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For months now, watching Israel’s relentless genocidal acts against Palestine has redefined what I thought I knew about cruelty and violence – their blocking of humanitarian aid, arresting and brutally torturing civilian prisoners often without cause and allegedly abusing and raping girls and women. But, one aspect of their campaign that has largely been left out of mainstream discourse is Israel’s recent destruction of Palestine’s libraries, archives and universities since Oct. 9, known commonly as scholasticide.”

By damaging, looting or completely destroying 14 libraries, publishing houses, bookstores and archival buildings, as well as 378 schools, including 12 universities as of Feb. 8, Israel is destroying important sites of Palestine’s culture, heritage, history and knowledge and, subsequently, any physical record of their existence within Palestinian borders.

As a Library and Information Science student, these attacks anger me beyond description.

Growing up, libraries were my source of solace and comfort, a place I visited with my family on the weekends as soon as I could sit and listen to a story. It’s where I first found a love of reading, learned about important moments in history and came to better understand my identity and place in the world.

Now halfway through my first semester of graduate school, I have learned that there are plenty of reasons why libraries are imperfect, whether it be funding issues, a lack of staff diversity or material censorship from within the institution itself. But, that hasn’t changed my conviction in the idea that libraries can be revolutionary and life-saving; they are in fact heritage sites of collective knowledge that represent the identity of a people and nation.

To me, it’s bad enough that Israel has destroyed Palestine’s ancient physical buildings, which represented the state’s heritage through their architecture. But I also mourn the loss of irreplaceable collections of rare books, valuable cultural artifacts and hundreds of years worth of historical records. I mourn the killings of those who were sheltering in these spaces for safety, like in the case of the Diana Tamari Sabbagh Library in November. I mourn the thousands of teachers, students, librarians and scholars who were reportedly targeted in deliberate IDF air raids, according to Euro-Med Monitor.

On top of everything else, what books are left are being burned by Palestinian children out of desperation to stay warm in their tents, forcing them to unwillingly participate in the destruction of their own heritage. It also furthers Israel’s systematic attack on any semblance of knowledge in a region that, prior to the current and ongoing genocide, boasted a national literacy rate of 97.7%.

“We are now sitting in the school library we were displaced to, and instead of reading books, we burned them to light a fire for ourselves,” Palestinian student Rahaf Hamad told Al Jazeera. In other cases, it’s the only worldly possessions survivors have left. It’s what happened to the family of Palestinian poet and Syracuse alum Mosab Abu Toha, who were “looking for food under the rubble of my bombed house. All they could find were books.”

Unfortunately, the truth is that this has all been happening long before Oct. 7. During the 1948 Nakba, the Israeli military looted and destroyed Palestinian archives and libraries. Today, Israel is erasing Palestinian culture and history, and even more so, preventing Palestinians from documenting evidence of the violence being committed against them. After all, without records, it’s difficult to verify facts or truth. It becomes easy to deny an entire people of their humanity, dignity and memories, and create new narratives that mythicize them or leave them out altogether from history.

This attack on intellectualism has been happening all over the world throughout history and into today, including in the U.S. Albeit, it’s to a lesser extent, but nonetheless we now live in a country where book bans continue to be on the rise, where the state of Virginia even passed a law making it possible to prosecute and imprison librarians who have restricted materials in their buildings.

If I want to work as a librarian, I will have to anticipate pushback and uphill battles if I want to include materials, say, by Palestinian authors or host Palestinian-centered events and programming. But, I already know that this is not a job without risks, even at the expense of my own life. I don’t even have to imagine a world with limited intellectual freedom – we’re living in it now.

But, it’s important to remember that Israel’s acts of genocide have not been met without resistance. Within Gaza, teachers who have survived IDF assaults are leading classes for children in refugee camps. Zachary Foster, a professor of Palestinian history at Princeton University, has been at work since 2020 creating Palestine Nexus, a comprehensive digital archive of Palestinian maps, newspapers, documents, diaries and other records from as far back as 1590.

Libraries around the country are currently compiling book lists featuring Palestinian authors of fiction, nonfiction and poetry like “Mother of Strangers” by Suad Amiry, “A Curious Land” by Susan Muaddi Darraj or “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear” by Mosab Abu Toha.

Even in the face of so much cultural destruction, it keeps me going to witness so much perseverance, to realize that loss is not without hope, without fight. For my part, I will never stop protecting Palestinians’ right to hold onto their own knowledge, to their intellect, to their history and to their lives.

Sofia Aguilar is a first-year grad student in the Library and Information Science program. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at saguilar07@syr.edu.