Israel
plundered and destroyed tens of thousands of Palestinian books in the
years after the State’s establishment, according to a doctoral thesis
to be submitted next month by a Ben-Gurion University researcher.
In an interview with the researcher published on al-Jazeera’s
website Thursday, he claimed that Israel destroyed the Palestinian
books in the framework of its plan to “Judaize the country” and cut off
its Arab residents from their nation and culture.

According to the doctoral dissertation, Israeli authorities
collected tens of thousands of Arab books in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa,
Safed, and other towns that were home to Arabs. Israeli officials
proceeded to hand out about half the books, while destroying the second
half, characterizing them as a “security threat,” the researcher said.

In his al-Jazeera interview, the researcher claimed that, based on
Israeli archives, IDF troops plundered the books from the homes of
Palestinians expelled during the “Nakba” and handed them over to
authorities. The State proceeded to establish a library in Jaffa and
other towns for the books, he said.

‘Cultural massacre’

The researcher told al-Jazeera that according to documents he
possesses, Israel destroyed 27,000 books in 1958, claiming that they
were useless and threatened the State. Authorities sold the books, most
of them textbooks, to a paper plant, he said.

“This was a cultural massacre undertaken in a manner that was
worse than European colonialism, which safeguarded the items it stole
in libraries and museums,” the researcher charged.

He
added that some books were sold at discounted prices to Arab schools,
while the others were transferred to the Hebrew University’s library in
Jerusalem.