How Palestinians Are Building a Digital Archive That Can’t Be Erased
“This battle of trying to erase the Palestinian culture and Palestinian memory—it’s not something theoretical.”Shomali says that roughly 80 percent of the country’s national collections have been looted, destroyed, or remain under Israeli control. “We document, they loot; but every time we document, we document with less vivid memory.”It is one of the reasons the museum turned to technology. Funded through diaspora donations and partnerships with the University of California and the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the project involves extensive cataloging, translations, and linguistic proofreading.
- ▪“This battle of trying to erase the Palestinian culture and Palestinian memory—it’s not something theoretical.”Shomali says that roughly 80 percent of the country’s national collections have been looted, destroyed, or remain under Israeli c
- ▪“We document, they loot; but every time we document, we document with less vivid memory.”It is one of the reasons the museum turned to technology.
- ▪Funded through diaspora donations and partnerships with the University of California and the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the project involves extensive cataloging, translations, and linguistic proofreading.
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Tamara DavisonCultureJul 6, 2026 5:00 AMHow Palestinians Are Building a Digital Archive That Can’t Be ErasedDistributed backups, cyber resilience, and a half-million records are preserving Palestinian history beyond any single building or border.Photograph: GETTY IMAGESCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyPalestinian culture has been looted, destroyed, and displaced for decades. Since October 2023, however, the destruction of Gaza’s cultural institutions has accelerated, prompting a team in the occupied West Bank to build something they hope cannot be seized or erased: a digital archive of Palestinian memory.“Within a week, Israel bombed two art galleries, seven museums, two main archives in Gaza, and hundreds of archaeological sites,” says Amer…
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