“Israel” Destroys Gaza’s Main Public Library 

By Staff, Agencies 

Palestinians inspecting the destruction wreaked by the “Israeli” occupation army 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 “Israeli” aggression. 

Officials have decried the bombing of the building as a “deliberate attempt to destroy historical documents and books”.

The library was in regular use by members of the community, including schoolchildren, before the start of the “Israeli” aggression.

Video footage shared by Storyful, 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 Organization [UNESCO] to “intervene and protect cultural centers and condemn the occupation’s targeting of these humanitarian facilities protected under international humanitarian law”.

Literary Hub, 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 "culturicide" 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.

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

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