cultural massacre" or cultural genocide?

Researcher: Israel destroyed Palestinian books

*Tens of thousands of Palestinian books destroyed after Israel's
establishment, Ben-Gurion University researcher says*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.

The researcher estimated that about 6,000 Palestinian books are
currently available at the National Library at Hebrew University.
However, he claimed that many other books in Arabic, English, and French
were not recorded, charging that most of them are being held in the
library's warehouses and cannot be accessed.