Devastating destruction of Gaza’s cultural heritage
JVL Introduction
This article outlines the extent of the damage to important cultural buildings in Gaza; these include Universities, Museums, schools, Mosques, an ancient Church and much more. This is not a new phenomenon. Accusations are levelled at Hamas for using building materials for tunnels and not to meet the needs of the people and yet time after time these destroyed buildings have been replaced, as the picture above shows. There are now no Universities left standing in Gaza.
We reproduce all the pictures from their chilling article. Of course, people matter more than buildings but the extent of the destruction can be considered “Cultural genocide” and the level of destruction will severely hamper rebuilding Gaza’s community as well as its buildings. We have previously published about the impact of the destruction of homes and neighbourhoods (see “related articles” below) and this Guardian interactive piece showing the extent of the destruction How war destroyed Gaza’s neighbourhoods – visual investigation | Gaza | The Guardian. We recommend revisiting them.
LL
This article was originally published by +972 Magazin on Sat 17 Feb 2024. Read the original here.
The obliteration of Gaza’s multi-civilizational treasures
Israel’s war has brought ruin to thousands of years of rich heritage in Gaza, with Palestinian experts decrying the destruction as a cultural genocide.
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For over a decade, extremist rabbis and followers have called for the levelling of Gaza, and were not properly reprimanded by the authorities who have decided to do just that using Oct 7th, (in which many Jews were killed by Israeli forces), as a “justification”. How much is it going to cost just to rebuild one school; one hospital; one university, one apartment building – and equip/ furnish them – even if Israel allows a smoothe flow of materials into Gaza. More importantly, who is going to stop Israeli “settlers” from claiming land and building their “settlements”?
Devastating though important news. I had no idea how many historic sites existed in Gaza. More widespread coverage of this is important.