protecting land, history and archives in Palestine and Lebanon / archiving against genocide / documenting war crimes and human rights violations / building capacity and resilience / advocating for land liberation and the right of return / producing knowledge for justice and decolonization
Contact: Dr. Jamila J. Ghaddar (director@archiveslab.org)
Donate to the Fighting Erasure: Digitizing Gaza’s Genocide and the War on Lebanon project! All proceeds go directly to fund project activities. Tax receipts available through the American University of Beirut.
Fighting Erasure: Digitizing Gaza's Genocide and the War on Lebanon is a comprehensive project launched on October 8, 2023 aimed at documenting and protecting indigenous land, built environments, archives, and heritage in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine, as well as in South Lebanon and the surrounding areas. The project includes a series of advocacy, education, and capacity building activities, along with the critical work of archiving, preserving, and providing access to what may become one of the most thoroughly documented genocides and land colonization in history. We archive against genocide by documenting human rights violations and settlements expansion, as well as its cultural dimensions through heritage and archival erasure. We archive against genocide by using visualization techniques and new media to educate about the human toll of the violence. We archive against genocide by providing the knowledge, training, equipment, resources, and planning and coordination needed locally to build capacity, resilience, and networks for archival protection, land tenure documentation, and heritage preservation. We advocate to, and engage with, diverse publics and decision makers to promote the safeguarding of heritage and archives, the reclamation of colonized lands and return of displaced people.
Fighting Erasure: Digitizing Gaza's Genocide and the War on Lebanon is housed at the American University of Beirut’s Department of Architecture, Archives & Digital Media Lab, and Arab American University's Library & Visual Archive Department (Ramallah). Collaborators and partners include the Eyes on Heritage (Gaza), Archives Association in Palestine/ACP, Lebanese Library Association, International Council on Archives, Middle East Librarians Association, University of Tokyo, Al Jazeera English, City University of New York’s Archival Technologies Lab, University Research Board, Applied Research Institute Jerusalem, Publishers for Palestine, we here, Library Freedom, up//root and Interference Archive.
Learn more about the Fighting Erasure project:
Watch recordings of our virtual seminar series events on the MELA Youtube channel.
Read news reports about the project featured in Gulf Times, Qatar National Library, and Qatar News Agency.
See the Briarpatch (English) and Al Akhbar (Arabic) articles by Dr. Jamila J. Ghaddar.
Watch a keynote by Dr. Jamila J. Ghaddar at the International Conference on the History of Records and Archives on the project.
Read "Saving history: These archivists' mission to preserve social media record of war in Gaza" in Dateline, featuring an interview with Dr. Jamila J. Ghaddar.
Project Principal Investigators
Dr. Jamila Ghaddar is a Lebanese feminist, archivist, historian, and educator. She is Assistant Professor in Archival Information & Digital Humanities at the Media Studies Department at the University of Amsterdam, and Founding Director of the Archives & Digital Media Lab. She is Chair of the Middle East Librarians Association’s Archives & Records Management Training & Advocacy Group; a member of the Association of Canadian Archivists’ Indigenous Matters Committee; co-convenor of Documentary Nakba: A Reading Group for Archival Liberation in & beyond Palestine; and co-host of Archives & Heritage in Palestine. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow working with Raymond Frogner at the National Center for Truth & Reconciliation and Dr. Greg Bak at the History Dept. at the University of Manitoba. Her publications appear in Archival Science; Library Quarterly; Archivaria; Displaced Archival Heritage (2023, Routledge); Research Methods: Diversifying and Decolonizing Research (2024, SAGE); Briarpatch; Al-Akhbar. Ghaddar has led and collaborated on archival initiatives and information projects in sites around the world, including at AUB’s Jafet Library archiving the personal papers of the Arab intellectual who coined the term “Nakba”, Dr. Constantine Zurayk; and at the Centre of Memory in Johannesburg preserving the papers of the antiapartheid hero, Nelson Mandela.
Dr. Hanine Shehadeh is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities at NY Abu Dhabi. Her research focuses on the intersections between settler colonialism, climate change, and new media. She is deconstructing the global framing of climate change and environmental justice, exploring how these issues are intricately tied to the settler-colonial reality in Palestine. Her academic work interrogates how new media landscapes can reinforce or resist digital colonialism, particularly in relation to indigenous identities and colonial subjugation. She contributes to a collaborative project with the Center for Advanced Mathematical Sciences at AUB, examining the dynamics of settler colonialism and its socio-political implications. Dr. Shehadeh earned her Ph.D. in Intellectual History from the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. Her dissertation, which explored the historical construction of the "dishonorable Jew" in European Christian antisemitism and Zionism, was nominated for Columbia University's Salo and Jeanette Baron Prize in Jewish Studies. She is also a recipient of Columbia University's Humanities War and Peace Initiative award for her work on affect formation in settler-colonial societies.
Dr. Rami Zurayk is currently a Professor of Ecosystem Management at the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the American University of Beirut. Dr. Zurayk served as Interim Director at the Palestine Land Studies Center at the American University of Beirut (2022-2024). During his tenure, he worked on significant projects, including the Fighting Erasure initiative. Beyond regional initiatives, he has global influence as a member of the Steering Committee of the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security. He also served as a commissioner on the EAT-Lancet Commission on sustainable diets from sustainable food systems. He currently advises the National Convener for Food Systems in Lebanon. Dr. Zurayk has a considerable body of work and publications focused on the Arab World, particularly examining the political ecology of Arab food security focusing on its spatial dimension. He has published extensively on food security, including works on Gaza and on "Farming Palestine for Freedom" as well as extensively on issues pertaining to land use, food security and sovereignty, sustainable agriculture, and water and food systems during conflict. For two years, he was the lead researcher on the UN-HABITAT program on Land and Conflict in the Arab Region. He is a founding member of the Arab Food Sovereignty Network, which focuses on issues of food sovereignty in the Arab World, and is a contributor to Al Shabaka, the Palestine Policy Network.
Project management team
Rula Shahwan currently serves as the Director of the Library and Visual Archive Department at the Arab American University. She is a Ph.D. candidate at Goethe University – Frankfurt, her thesis focus is on fragmented memory, particularly on the looting, destruction, and loss of Palestinian Archives under Israeli Settler Colonialism. She is also a specialist in Palestinian cinema studies. Shahwan’s career began at the Palestinian Ministry of Culture, where she led the Cinema Archive Department. She later transitioned to the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation as the Head of the Visual Archive Unit, where she successfully restored portions of the lost archive and oversaw digitization initiatives. Her M.A. in Conflict Resolution included a thesis titled, The Power of Visual Archive, Collective Memory, and National Identity.
Dr. Abdul Latif Zaki Abu Hashim is a historian, intellectual, and researcher in Arab-Islamic heritage, particularly the history of southern Palestine. He is Director General of the Eyes on Heritage Foundation. Dr. Abu Hashim has authored many books, research papers, and publications, including Ithaf Al-Azza in the History of Gaza (Study and Verification), The Book of Historical Mosques in Gaza City, The Diwan of Ibn Zaqaa (Study and Verification), and The Catalog of Manuscripts of the Great Omari Mosque in Gaza. His latest book, Ottoman Gaza, includes the records of the Ottoman Court of Gaza during the Ottoman period. It is considered an important source for the history of Gaza. He verified this book after obtaining a copy from the Damascus Library, a process that took four years, making it a testament to the history of Ottoman Gaza during that period. In addition to these, he has numerous peer-reviewed scientific research papers and both published and unpublished articles.
Hanin Alamsi is an engineer and researcher, working as the Executive Director of the Eyes on Heritage Foundation for Studies, Research, and Publishing in Gaza. She also serves as a consultant in the field of cultural heritage and holds a Master's degree in Middle Eastern Studies and a Master's degree in Restoration.
Omar Khatib currently acts as head of Ramallah City Archives with over three decades of experience in archiving, document management, and the implementation of archival quality standards. He is the Founder and General Coordinator of the Archives Association in Palestine and is the Strategic Documentary heritage Specialist for the Nord Skills Development Foundation, Finland. Khatib has achieved influential success across sectors and cultures through projects and missions.
Fatme El Bazzal is a doctoral researcher at the Bibliotheca Arabica project (2024-). She holds a Master of Arts in Information Sciences and a Bachelor of Arts in Library and Information Management from the Lebanese University. She has extensive library and archival experience, having worked as a Metadata and Reference Librarian at the Lebanese National Library, where she contributed to cataloging, policy development, and the relocation of the library’s collection. Fatme has also participated in archival projects like the Virtual Museum of Censorship with MARCH Lebanon and the Feminist Library of the Knowledge Workshop, as well as a project on the personal library and archive of the late Professor Hassan Chalabi, in Beirut. Her Ph.D. project focuses on the manuscript heritage of the Jabal ʿĀmil region, specifically the endowed collection of Asad Allāh ibn Muhammad Muʾmin al-Khātūnī al-ʿĀmilī in the Astān Quds Library, Mashhad, Iran which was donated in the year 1067 AH/1657 AD . Fatme's research explores the provenance history of this collection, placing it within the context of the migration of ʿĀmilī scholars to Safavid Iran, who attained various academic and administrative positions in the emerging Safavid state and played a significant role in reshaping the religious identity of the Safavid Empire.
Mona Bashir is a researcher in the Intangible Cultural Heritage with a special interest in archives and the methods of searching, preservation and using it to maintain the Palestinian narrative and memory, especially in Gaza. Since 2018, she has served as a board member of Nawa for Culture and Art Association, which strives to empower Gaza's local community through art and culture, resisting the forces that aim to silence us. Her professional experiences reflect this resistance. Working with UNESCO on a Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) study, she documented the devastating impact of Israeli wars on Gaza’s Intangible Cultural Heritage. This work extended to collaborations with both international and local organizations, where she assessed cultural and educational programs in Gaza, ensuring that our heritage is not lost amid destruction. She is part of the Knowledge Production Project at the Arab Studies Center, archiving film data from the Arab world since 1979—a crucial task in preserving our collective memory. From coordinating the 2013 “We Register. We Decide.” campaign to organizing the 2018 “Sound and Color—To Gaza” exhibition in Amman, her work fuses cultural activism with tangible support for our people. Most recently, she has been building an archive of the missing people in Gaza during the current war, ensuring their stories are heard and their cases pursued by responsible authorities.
Project Activity #1: Archives & Heritage for Palestine Seminar Series
View recordings of the series on the MELA Youtube channel.
Objective: To strengthen professional and scholarly networks locally and globally, and to educate on and advocate for the safeguarding and return of archives and heritage by and about Palestine.
Description: This project activity involves organising a series of online talks on Archives & Heritage for Palestine featuring renowned Palestinian and Lebanese speakers. These events aim to engage professionals, scholars, and the public in discussions about the importance of archives and heritage in preserving Palestinian culture and history. This series is organised with the Middle East Librarians Association and Publishers for Palestine; and sponsored by Library Freedom, we here, CUNY's Archival Technologies Lab, and the Lebanese Library Association.
Project Activity #2: Archiving Gaza's Genocide & the War on Lebanon
Objective: To create a comprehensive Digital Archive on the Gaza Genocide & War on Lebanon stewarded by the Archives & Digital Media Lab that documents the events, data, media, and audiovisual content from Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine, as well as South Lebanon starting from October 7, 2023. This archive will serve as a detailed record for future reference, analysis, and historical documentation.
Description: This initiative systematically gathers and organises information from various sources, including news reports, eyewitness accounts, social media, Telegram channels, and official statements. Utilising open-source tools, the collected data will be categorised and stored on a secure, accessible platform to ensure the preservation and easy retrieval of these vital historical records.
What Are We Documenting?
Genocide Timeline
Developing a day-by-day chronology of the genocide in Gaza, including both textual and video records
Destruction Documentation across the Gaza Strip
Targeting of civilians, journalists, medical staff, etc., by numbers
Residential units and infrastructure
Cultural heritage sites (archives, libraries, museums, archaeological sites, historical houses, etc.)
Educational institutions
Healthcare facilities
Targeting of civilians, journalists, medical staff, etc., by numbers
Global Coverage of the genocide in Gaza and the War on Lebanon
The impact of the war on Palestinian civilians (diseases, famine, etc.)
The ongoing war in South Lebanon
The impact of this war on global public opinion
International media coverage of the war on Gaza
Demonstrations in Lebanon, worldwide, and across universities
Israeli Annexation of the West Bank
The ongoing attacks in the West Bank
The situation of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails
Israeli accounts addressing and reporting on the war
Video Archiving
Downloading and categorising social media videos into various categories such as official statements, media coverage, influencers, celebrities, dark comedy, chants and songs, arts and literature, civilian life, bombardments, military operations, ICJ involvement, protests, boycott movements, etc. Accounts covering the bombardment and destruction in Gaza. Accounts of journalists in Gaza providing daily war coverage. Accounts of individuals who have become citizen journalists, sharing immediate coverage of the war.
Bloggers, teenagers, and civilians from Gaza sharing their daily hardships.
Project Activity #3: The Fighting Erasure Website - Digital Storytelling for Liberation & Return
Objective: Utilizing digital storytelling and data visualization tools and techniques, to develop an interactive website that features accessible, detailed, and interactive documentation of the violence in Gaza, elsewhere in Palestine, and South Lebanon, as captured in the Digital Archive on the Gaza Genocide and War on Lebanon, with a focus on its human, environmental, cultural, and political dimensions (Shehadeh 2023; see also Shehadeh 2024).
Description: In collaboration with the University of Tokyo and Al-Jazeera English, this activity includes developing a website that serves as a comprehensive platform dedicated to documenting the ongoing genocide in Gaza and preserving the stories, evidence, and historical context of this humanitarian crisis. It brings together extensive research, eyewitness accounts, legal frameworks, and multimedia resources to provide a holistic understanding of the atrocities and their impact on the people of Gaza. It includes a storytelling initiative that focuses on families erased from historical records, reconnecting people with their land, and preserving the deep ties between land and people. The storytelling will explore all aspects of the war, including the destruction of cultural heritage, the impact on the education and health sectors, and the stories of victims. By documenting and making accessible these narratives, the initiative aims to shed light on the human and cultural dimensions of the ongoing conflict.
Project Activity #4: The Environmental Footprint of Israeli Settlements Dynamics on Palestinian Farmland and Livelihoods
Objective: To develop a spatial model to analyze the expansion of Israeli settlements in the South-East Bethlehem area of the West Bank over a 39-year period, from 1985 to 2024. The project seeks to understand the dynamics of settlement growth and its implications for land use, environmental health, and the Palestinian farmers. This is a collaborative project funded by the University Research Board and conducted in partnership with the Applied Research Institute Jerusalem.
Description: By collecting aerial photos and coordinating data collection through field work in the West Bank, we seek to understand the dynamics of settlements growth and its implications for land use, environmental health, and the Palestinian farmers (Zurayk et al. 2001 ; Bahn, Yehya and Zurayk 2021; see also Zurayk 2011). This is a collaborative project funded by the University Research Board and conducted in partnership with the Applied Research Institute Jerusalem. Advanced GIS technologies are utilized to map and quantify land use and land cover changes, with satellite image classification and sophisticated methodologies employed to accurately detect these changes. This project activity, which is critical in understanding settlement expansion, highlights the importance of archives and spatial analysis in assessing the geopolitical complexities of the West Bank region. It also aims to increase our understanding of how land and built environments are in themselves evidence of both genocide and indigenous habitation under settler colonialism.
Project Activity #5: Terra Devastata: The Environmental Footprint of the Israeli War on South Lebanon.
Objective:
To assess and quantify the environmental footprint of the Israeli war on South Lebanon in September 2024, with a focus on soil, water, a vegetation contamination. This innovative project utilizes systematic review, citizen science, advanced laboratory analyses, and bioassay experiments to inform ecological rehabilitation and contribute to global environmental justice and post-conflict recovery efforts.
Description:
The "Terra Devastata" project investigates the environmental devastation caused by the Israeli onslaught on South Lebanon, which severely impacted key ecosystems critical for agriculture and livelihoods. Using a multi-phased approach, the project combines systematic review, satellite imagery, and fieldwork conducted by citizen scientists and trained farmers to identify contamination hotspots. Advanced analytical techniques—such as Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy, Gas Chromatography, and High-Performance Liquid Chromatography—measure pollutants like white phosphorus, heavy metals, and organic compounds. Microbial soil analysis and bioassay experiments with corn seedlings evaluate the ecological impact of these contaminants. Spatial mapping highlights contamination trends, filling critical research gaps in the MENA region and providing actionable insights for environmental rehabilitation and recovery.
Project Activity #6: Global Standards Adaption & Training for Protection of Archives
Objective: To build local capacity for the protection, preservation, rescue and recovery of at-risk archives and records through development of comprehensive guidelines in Arabic, and to train Palestinian and Lebanese archivists on implementing these guidelines effectively.
Description: This project activity involves developing detailed guidelines in Arabic that outlines how to adapt existing archiving rules and standards to suit local contexts in Palestine, Lebanon and the Arab region. The guidelines will cover key aspects of archiving, including classification, preservation, digitization, and access. In turn, a series of training sessions will be conducted for Palestinian and Lebanese archivists. These sessions will focus on practical implementation of the guidelines, aiming to enhance the skills and knowledge of local archivists and standardise archiving practices across the region. This work is conducted in collaboration with the Lebanese Library Association, Middle East Librarians Association (Archives & Records Management Advocacy & Training Group), and the Archives Association of Palestine.
Project Activity #7: Developing a Digital Infrastructure for Archival Preservation
Objective: To create a digital governance, technical, and institutional infrastructure (increased and more secure servers, policies, procedures, standards, guidelines, institutions, network technologies, etc.) for repositories and archival custodians in Palestine, Lebanon and the region to house digitised and born-digital records, archives and collections anywhere in Palestine, in Palestinian refugee camps in surrounding countries, and any other material pertaining to Palestinian identity and history that is at risk due to the expanding conflict.
Description: A collaborative of archival and heritage professionals and institutions are being developed with the aim of coordinating the efforts to preserve and safeguard archives and heritage, as well as to provide mutual support, facilitate resource sharing and knowledge transfer, and to increase capacity for advocacy and public education. This consortium will be focused on Palestine along with Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Egypt, and more broadly the Arab region. The aim is to create regional capacity, with the support of global partners and associations, to safeguard and preserve archives, records, collections and related heritage in place (Ghaddar 2024), i.e., as much as possible without removing them from their original place, and/or nearby countries, and/or the Arab region. This digital infrastructure will be housed in multiple sites to ensure a decentralised infrastructure as well as multiple copies of digital material for safety and preservation reasons.
Donate to the Fighting Erasure: Digitizing Gaza’s Genocide and the War on Lebanon project! All proceeds go directly to fund project activities. Tax receipts available through the American University of Beirut.
Header Image: Recreation by Ibrahim Abusitta of an image of an IOF soldier posing for a picture in front of burning books. A screenshot of the original image was tweeted out by Younis Tirawi (@ytirawi), a Palestinian reporter on security and political affairs. In a fact check for snopes.com, Taija PerryCook reports the location is presumed to be the Central Library of the Islamic University of Gaza. This is part of the cultural genocide in which at least 104 archaeological heritage sites have been destroy. The image was originally published in Briarpatch on July 23, 2024.
