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 […]