by Dr. Piyush Mathur

Accusing Israel of a 'genocidal war' aimed at destroying 'all aspects of life' in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Culture released a 58-page report earlier in December documenting the damage that the region’s cultural sector had received through October 7-December 6, 2023. 

Titled 'Second Preliminary Report on the Cultural Sector Damage: War on Gaza Strip, October 7th-December 6th, 2023', the report includes a short introduction authored/undersigned by Dr. Atef Abu Saif, the Minister of Culture in the Palestinian Authority.  In the Introduction, Dr. Saif, who is also a well-known writer, avers that the ongoing cultural destruction of the Gaza Strip merely takes forward the Nakba of 1948 (whereby as much as 78% of Mandatory Palestine was coercively turned into Israel).

The report claims that up until December 6, twenty-eight intellectual or cultural luminaries (including four children) had been killed; nine publishing houses and libraries had been bombed; and twenty one cultural centres, twenty historical buildings, and three production studios and companies had been damaged or destroyed.  (Some of these incidents had separately been reported in the global media.)

Following a table of basic statistics pertaining to the Gaza Strip’s cultural sector before this war, the report provides short biographical sketches of each of the 28 luminaries that it claims have been lost to the war; these sketches include the photos of these luminaries and the dates, locations of their deaths (In some cases, these dates and locations are approximate.)

The luminaries include personalities from music, creative writing, physics, historiography, visual representation, dance, journalism, civic activism, calligraphy, theatre, and decoration. Their sketches in the report not only provide poignant glimpses into these individuals’ inestimably creative personalities but they also indicate to the global outsider the elegant liveliness of the Gaza Strip’s residents (notwithstanding their extreme hardship for the past 16 years of the blockade and prior)—up until the current incursion by Israel.

The youngest of the individuals depicted in the report are two 8-year old girls (Sham Abu Obeid and Leila Abdel Fattah Al-Atarsh), who were members of a native dance (‘Dabke’) group titled Champions; the oldest is 76 (Abdul Karim Al-Hashash), a writer and a historian. 

When reading all these sketches and looking at the luminaries' photographs, one goes through a churning of torturous emotions and a heart-wrenching sense of loss, given that one already knows that these people have already died painfully through the war.  These posthumous sketches, however, are also rather illuminating to somebody like this writer—a person who has never visited Palestine—given that the individuals they capture are a far cry from the militant images from the region that otherwise hog global media outlets as well as much of the social media.

Each of the profiles is not only touching but also has something to teach the reader; of course, each of them is also just the tip of the iceberg comprising the intensifying, expanding horror, not only in the Gaza Strip (but also the rest of Palestine).

Subsequent to these profiles, the report provides excellent short introductions (often illustrated with photographs) to Gaza's major cultural-intellectual landmarks and venues that have been destroyed or damaged through the ongoing Israeli incursion.  In several cases, the report includes 'before and after' photos of these landmarks or venues.

The report notes that Dr. Saif himself 'has been trapped in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war' and has also 'lost many relatives due to the bombing.' Perhaps it needs to be noted here that, ahead of the Israeli incursion, the Gaza Strip was under the de facto control of Hamas rather than the Palestinian Authority.

The report does not mention it, but Thoughtfox readers might benefit from the information that Dr. Saif is also the author of the book The Drone Eats with Me: Diaries from a City Under Fire (2016)—whose 2017 edition has a foreword by Noam Chomsky. Dr. Saif has also authored several other creative works in Arabic.

The report is available in both English and Arabic, and can be downloaded by clicking here (English) and here (Arabic).

Dr. Piyush Mathur is a Research Scholar at Ronin Institute, New Jersey. If you wish to contact him or send a message to Thoughtfox regarding this piece, then use this form. You could also post your comments in the Comments section below.