18-09-2025 - Eleonora speech

We have been here for many months, demanding Dutch support for the genocidal campaign in Gaza be withdrawn. The amount of lives that have been lost are uncountable, according to the latest estimates Israel has murdered over 680.000 civilians. Behind that number there are full lives, of mothers, fathers, children, students, doctors, journalists and so many more. The individual lives of whom we cannot even begin to imagine, due to their large number. Their lives will remain unknown to us, and yet we are here for them.

The loss of their lives is immense, but it’s not the only thing that is being destroyed in Gaza. The entire fabric of life is being ripped from them among the rubble. Families are gone, friends lost, schools destroyed, mosques leveled to the ground, and olive trees uprooted. Their heritage is burned and plundered. Their way of life made impossible.

Since October 2023, Israel has obliterated Gaza’s education system and destroyed over half of all religious and cultural sites in the Gaza Strip. Israel used airstrikes, shelling, burning and controlled demolitions to damage and destroy more than 90 percent of all the school and university buildings in Gaza, creating conditions where education for children, including adolescents, and the livelihood of teachers have been made impossible.

Attacks by the Israeli military have damaged more than half of all religious and cultural sites. Israeli attacks also targeted religious sites that served as places of refuge, killing hundreds of people, including women and children.

In the West Bank Israeli authorities have appropriated, developed and profited from cultural heritage sites representing Palestinian, Jewish and other cultures, displaced Palestinian residents from those sites, and blocked or severely restricted Palestinians from accessing such sites.

Hundreds of cultural sites, museums, libraries, archives, mosques and schools have all been wantonly destroyed by Israel. What we see here is a project not only to murder and expel as many Palestinians as possible, it is to destroy all traces of them, clear them with their roots, and their history. It is to destroy all infrastructure so they cannot even try to pick up their lives again, should they dare and stay. What is happening now is a war crime. It is also a cultural genocide. Israel is trying to erase the connection of the people with their land. Gaza’s heritage is part of its people, its history and their connection to the land.

I work in a library myself, and studied archaeology when I was younger. These things have great importance to me. And it pains me that the European Archaeological Association spoke out way too late, and with a mealy mouthed statement. It pains me that even the library where I work avoids the subject in order to remain “neutral”. We all know the truth, neutrality in the face of violence is complacency with the status quo. It is saying: whatever happens, we do not care, we do not disapprove. We heritage workers in Europe stay silent when cultural heritage is destroyed, and look the other way when our colleagues are murdered. It is a shame on us and fields we are dedicating our work to.

But I have bad news for anyone who thinks a people can be destroyed by burning their books, plundering their museums and destroying their places of worship. As long as there are Palestinians left, these things will be remade. Books will be written, olive trees planted, art will be made, mosques and schools rebuilt. The soil of Gaza itself will be testament to the horrific destruction Israel has perpetrated on it, but it will flourish again.