Resisting Erasure: Libraries in Palestine and Palestine in Libraries

In the foreword to Resisting Erasure: Libraries in Palestine and Palestine in Libraries (Litwin Books, 2026), Emily Drabinksy writes about the difficulties encountered while indexing articles about settler colonialism and apartheid in the occupied West Bank in 2003. “The thesaurus I was required to use did not include such terms in relation to the territory known as Israel. In fact, Palestine did not exist at all, except as a historical formation.” Indexing anything related to Palestine under Arab-Israel conflict, Drabinski notes, erased the Palestinian experience while lending impunity to Israel’s violence and the US role in arming Israel. 

Editors Nora Lester Murad and Mary L. Onorato situate the book within the impact of the metaphor and reality of war: the actual war waged against Palestinians, and the war on libraries and archives in Palestine and the US. Through the contributions in this book, insights are provided as to how librarians are resisting censorship efforts and the erasure of Palestine and Palestinians. Divided in two parts, the first segment of the book deals with resisting erasure in Palestinian libraries and the efforts to preserve Palestinian history. The second segment focuses on resisting the enforced complicity in US libraries and institutions. 

The historical background to Palestine since 1948 provides the foundations  to understand the trajectories of its libraries, particularly during the Ottoman era. At its end, foreign libraries introduced both administrative organisation as well as Orientalist monopoly. The British Mandate further suppressed Palestinian education and limited school libraries while Palestinians were banned from public libraries in the era – a colonial tactic “to facilitate occupation of their [Palestinians’] land and obliterate their identity”. The Palestinian Nakba of 1948 further entrenched colonial rule and erasure by legitimising the theft of Palestinians’ public and private libraries. The same tactics were repeated during the 1967 Naksa, and in 1982 in Lebanon, when Zionist forces looted the PLO’s Research Centre, seizing all its material which required 35 trucks to transport.  

Looting was part of Israel’s colonial violence limiting Palestinian self-determination. The PRC’s stolen material – the majority of it returned in 1983 as part of a prisoner exchange –  documented and archived the Palestinian national movement and revolution. Following the massacres of Sabra and Shatila, which were documented in an issue of Palestine Affairs by the PRC, the staff started rebuilding its archives from microfilm copies of book and private collection donations. 

Israel’s periodical destruction of Gaza, leading up to the current genocide and its consequences, follow the same colonial trajectory of obliterating libraries. From the destruction of 2014 during Operation Protective Edge to the more recent destruction since 7 October 2023, Palestinians have tenaciously held on to reading, salvaging books from the rubble and maintaining their links to literature. Books were found to have been instrumental in helping Palestinians in Gaza cope with the genocide. At the same time, the genocide also left its mark on Gaza’s libraries and archives. The book states, “archivists and librarians have been repeatedly displaced, injured or killed, making it even more difficult to take stock of the damage to cultural heritage.” 

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While the Zionist colonial ideology furthered its war on Palestinian libraries and archives through the decades, the US complements Israel’s efforts with its own manoeuvrings. For example, the book notes the discrepancy between Palestine being constantly mentioned in the media, yet libraries do not stock enough books on Palestine, not even by the most renowned Palestinian authors. The discrepancy in the libraries is further highlighted by statistical data that shows, in August 2025 2,573 books in English about Israel, in comparison to the 650 books about Palestine. The book makes an observation: “the little acknowledge reality that many library workers and policy makers are uncomfortable giving visibility to Palestinian authors, dreading and groundless but potentially devastating accusation of antisemitism.”

The lack of visibility of books on Palestine is reflected in the lack of publicity as most are published by independent publishers or self-published. Another hurdle is the broad categorisation in libraries, which does not use subcategories for the Middle East and North Africa category except for Egypt. The Arab-Israeli conflict, not only a catalogue term but also a normalised reference that avoids the colonial reality, is not only misleading but promotes the erasure of Palestinians in books. The book cautions against bibliographies created by the Anti-Defamation League, which omits the Palestinian experience completely or else chooses titles in which it is misrepresented to further the erroneous concept of ‘both sides’.

The both sides narrative is further explored in the Librarians and Archivists with Palestine’s (LAP) Censorship Tracker through which awareness is raised about Palestine in libraries. Books about Palestine are deemed biased and librarians using the Censorship Tracker stated that “this argument is even applied to discussions opposing genocide, as if supporting genocide was a legitimate ‘side’ that required equal representation.” Embracing the Palestinian narrative also proved hazardous for librarians who have been the target of hate and harassment both online and in person.

Neutrality applied to libraries also results in the erasure of Palestinians. The book gives several examples relating to the dissemination of knowledge and how research guides are misrepresented. When it comes to Palestine, unlike other areas, neutrality was a required component of social justice. 

Juxtaposed against censorship, neutrality and erasure is the initiative by Andaleeb Cartonera, inspired by small publishers in Latin America which hold to an independent publishing tradition and which prints material already published online in cardboard cover books. Andaleeb Cartonera describes their press as having started in 2024, stating, “what fuelled the creation of Andaleeb Cartonera was the sense of impotence and rage so many of us felt ten months into the genocide.”

A standard misrepresentation of Palestinian narratives needs to be challenged from within establishments and institutions. Colonialism also reaches into spaces beyond Palestine, as the book shows with its detailed discussions of different aspects of libraries. As the destruction of Gaza continues through forced displacement and therefore increasing fragmentation of the Palestinians and their experience, what happens in the US – resisting the imperialist narrative to make space for the Palestinian one that is shattered by US complicity with Israel – remains an imperative. 

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