Israel-Palestine: The Great Book Robbery

[Elvis]

This is a new documentary describing the destruction of Palestinian libraries and books as well as the theft of books which were later placed in Israeli archives. The film will be released on AJE in May 2012.



Excerpts from an accompanying piece on the documentary (and one of the project's founders), Karina Goulordava, a graduate student at Univ. of Pittsburg

June 1948, Israeli soldiers advance in an affluent Arab neighborhood, now almost deserted, in western Jerusalem. The soldiers are followed by several librarians from the national library. Sporadic gunfire is heard. The men cling against the walls as they arrive in a street with big wealthy houses, their occupants left in haste. Breaking into house after house, the librarians “collect” entire libraries into boxes which are loaded onto trucks. Similar scenes repeat themselves throughout the Arab neighborhoods of western Jerusalem and later on in Haifa, Jaffa, Nazareth and other places. In total, 70,000 Palestinian books were “collected” in this manner.

[...]This is a major outcome of the 1948 war. Thousands of the books were recycled into paper while others were absorbed into the library’s general collection, making it impossible to trace them today. Six thousand of these books were eventually categorized as foreign and placed in the Eastern Studies Department of The National Library, although technically still owned by the Custodian of Absentee Property. The fate of these books is much like that of the Palestinian people: unlawfully taken from their homes, expelled and made foreign in their own land. Baring the label “AP” for Abandoned Property the books are the focal point of The Great Book Robbery project.

[...]The project aims to tell this untold story. In the film's teaser Nasser Eddin Nashashibi, one of the rightful owners of the books describes what this loss meant to him. The digital library lists 500 books with the titles, authors’ and owners’ names translated from Arabic into English. The goal is to list all 6,000 books in an effort to acknowledge their true origins. Finally, the website serves as a space for information and discussion. The latest feature on the website is the Forum a space for academics, librarians, students, journalists, filmmakers and others to share views on cultural preservation.

These stolen possessions still sit in The National Library, like treasured artifacts collected in a far off land thus denying that these books were taken from nearby Jerusalem neighborhoods.

In 2008, Gish Amit, a PhD student was the first to discover documents attesting to the looting of the books. Amit researched the orientalisation of the 6,000 AP books in the Eastern Studies Department, which were moved into a socially constructed space to which they never belonged.

Excerpt from the site:

Spoiler: show

The drive to “collect” the books came from the management and librarians of Israel’s National Library – a leading cultural institution of the Zionist movement and the state of Israel – where all the valuable books ended up. Another forty thousand (40,000) Palestinian books were “collected” in Haifa, Jaffa, Nazareth and other places.

Today, about six thousand of the these books can be found on the shelves of the National Library, organised like a fossilized army of a dead Chinese emperor, accessible but lifeless, indexed with the label AP – Abandoned Property. In Hebrew, the National Library is called “The National Home of the Books.”

This entirely unknown historical event came into light by chance; while researching in various state archives, Israeli PhD student Gish Amit stumbled upon documents that mentioned "collecting Arab books from occupied territories."

The plunder affair is a remarkable illustration of how one culture emerges from the dust of another after it has laid it to waste; the moment Palestinian culture is destroyed is also the moment a new Israeli consciousness is born, based not only on the erasure of the Arabs’ presence in Palestine but also on the destruction of their culture.

Dramatic new light illuminates the disaster inflicted upon the Palestinian people and their culture in 1948. A particularly chilling document from March 1949 lists tens of Jerusalemites whose libraries were "collected" – it reads like a Who’s Who of the Palestinian cultural elite of the time.

For decades Zionist and Israeli propaganda described the Palestinians as “people without culture.” Thus, the victorious Israeli state took upon itself to civilise the Palestinians who remained within its borders at the end of the 1948 war. They were forbidden to study their own culture or to remember their immediate past; their memory was seen as a dangerous weapon that had to be suppressed and controlled.

The Great Book Robbery is a multifaceted cultural heritage project. It has two major components: a documentary film to be produced, broadcast and screened internationally and this very website which will grow into a multi-function platform.

70,000 Palestinian books were systematically "collected" by the newly born state of Israel during the 1948 war. The story of the "collected" books is not only at the heart of our project but also the launching pad of a much bigger and wider endeavor. We intend to communicate the scope and depth of the Palestinian tragedy through the destruction of Palestinian culture in 1948.

[test123]

Dem jews

[Elvis]

Dem jews

Stfu and gtfo.

[test123]

I don't even care anymore. Most people are hypocritical in they world views, so debating the issues is just boiling down to name calling.

[Elvis]

I posted this for people to see. I find it to be an important piece of history and relevant to the recent Republican debates and comments made by intellectual crooks like Newt Gingrich. No one has to say anything in here. I just wanted people to take a look and maybe they'll get interested in the subject.

Not all threads have to be discussed at length. Some of them are just presenting news stories you don't see reported on by the MSM.

You care about your topics and I have mine. The end.

[BaneTheBrawler]

At least they're not being destroyed. If/when the israel/palestine situation ever gets sorted out, giving them back could be a nice PR move to help smooth things over.

[Elvis]

Only 6,000 of the 70,000 were recoverable AFAIK. According to the source I listed, a large chunk was 'lost' in the Israeli archival system (from which, the aforementioned 6,000 were only cataloged as 'foreign'), and another large chunk was recycled into paper.

It would be great to get those books back because they are a part of Palestinian culture/history.

[BaneTheBrawler]

oh, sucks. shouldnt have been books in a warzone, i guess. maybe if that situation settles down some can be re-written or restored. as awful as war is, i sometimes wonder if the destruction of knowledge is more the more tragic effect. then i remember people are the only reason culture has any meaning, and i push that thought away.

[solanis]

palestinian culture/history? how can a manufactured, fake ethnic group have a culture/history? unless you're talking in the fictional sense, like how a character in a novel can have a backstory.

[Churchill]

Just buy every Israeli a train ticket, then get your books back.

[BaneTheBrawler]

re: Solanis, assuming you're not being sarcastic/trolling etc. how do you define a "real" ethnic group?

[solanis]

one that wasn't created out of thin air for the purpose of trolling the israeli state

elvis is going to have a heart attack but w/e bring it

[tyven]

man, i was gonna come do some trolling, nothing too bad, maybe offer to loan them my copy of curious george or james and the giant peach but solanis is in here going all shots fired.

[solanis]

tonight is the night that the lights go out in georgia tyven

[BaneTheBrawler]

any evidence to back that assertion up, or you just digging through your colon for teh trololol?

[solanis]

a boatload bane, you must be really new to israel/palestine debates if this is such a new topic for you that you think I'm trolling

don't worry, elvis is probably writing a novel right now about it to bless us with

[BaneTheBrawler]

Well I'm not really new to it, just never looked into it in-depth. It stands to reason that there were probably people other than Jews in the region before modern Israel was created, so I never really questioned the existence of Palestinian culture.

[Trinsie]

a boatload bane, you must be really new to israel/palestine debates if this is such a new topic for you that you think I'm trolling

don't worry, elvis is probably writing a novel right now about it to bless us with

I would say they are an ethnic group in a way. I mean they are basically greek and arab with many generations of mixing in the region. You really can't say they are arab when comparing them to the other arabs further outside the area.

Edited for wording...

[solanis]

Well I'm not really new to it, just never looked into it in-depth. It stands to reason that there were probably people other than Jews in the region before modern Israel was created, so I never really questioned the existence of Palestinian culture.

of course, but there's no such thing as a palestinian ethnicity or history. they're just jordanians, given a new name to fuck further with israel. I can pull a ton of quotes from palestinian leaders for you confirming it if you like, if only so I'm not accused unjustly of trolling

[BaneTheBrawler]

nah, wasn't outright accusing, just expressing my suspicion.

also, even if palestine is just a different name for jordanians, what difference does that make? american is just a different name for europeans, so would you say american culture doesn't exist?