Fighting Erasure: Digitizing Gaza’s genocide
Overview
This project is a partnership between Dr. Hanine Shehadeh, Visiting Assistant Professor in Humanities at NYU Abu Dhabi (UAE), and Dr. Rami Zurayk, Professor at the American University of Beirut and Interim Director of the Palestine Land Studies Center (PLSC) (Lebanon).
This project responds to the urgent need to provide assistance and safeguard archival heritage in the Gaza Strip and across Palestine and the surrounding countries impacted by the expanding war and ongoing Israeli attacks. It involves digitizing the genocide that started on October 7th, 2023 as extensive reports have detailed the extensive damage, looting, and destruction to archives, records, documents and material heritage taking place at an alarming rate, and the threat of far greater damage given the continuity and potential escalation of the genocide in the Gaza Strip and the war in the region. The reports have indicated the incalculable loss of knowledge and skills with the deaths of professionals, educators, and volunteers in the food, health, archival, information, heritage, communication, and educational sectors in the Gaza Strip.
In the process, they develop a network of people across Palestine and the Arab region, with a focus on the Gaza Strip, to preserve, catalogue, digitise, and make accessible archives, records, heritage, and collections at risk, while increasing the emergency preparedness for a further escalation of conflict.