Gaza's past preserved as present is destroyed

As the systematic death and destruction in Gaza continues and steps up, it banks in a growing set of problems and dangers for the future.

Dr Lee Duffield, a former ABC correspondent in Europe, on a recent return visit, studied some of the consequences of war.

THE BOMBING of Gaza in this century is the second time around.

An exhibition this year, closing date 3 November, at the Museum of the Arab World in Paris, documents both how the territory was devastated by war in 1917 and the way that surviving cultural treasures there were saved from the attacks by Israel this time.

Gaza before 1917 (Photo courtesy of Brigitte Duffield)

Lessons of history — not well learned

It was British artillery, Australians involved, prising out Turkish imperial forces in World War I, that disfigured and destroyed the centuries-old oasis settlement, set among dunes along the coast.

Gaza was on important trade routes, prospered, and became celebrated as a centre for arts and creative architecture; pictured in the exhibition’s before-and-after gallery, showing the exotic and elegant place that was turned to rubble.

The population at the time was small. By 2023, the area was crowded, with over two million people, a consequence of the 1948 Nakba, when Palestinians were driven from their homes towards the sea and put into camps.

If Gaza had long before lost its acclaimed beauty and allure, the courageous building of a new community, with museums, hospitals, and universities can conjure thoughts of how beauty might be found in the eye of the beholder.

But the Israeli bombardments, worse than the 1940s London blitz, in terms of people killed, and destruction of their homes, has put an end to that optimistic drive; except that, given the human spirit the way it is, there will be salvage and preservation in memory, to help with rebuilding.

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Culture — preserving treasures from the past

Enter certain French archeological expeditions, with the involvement of Palestinian investigators and several others, in the 1990s. These, perhaps with a premonition of what was coming, rediscovered and got out to safety, a treasury of artefacts to be preserved and shown to the world.

It was timely. The first extreme-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was elected in Israel in 1996. He remained in office just three years but would come back a decade later for increasingly more authoritarian and aggressive, extended terms of office.

The removal of the artefacts is not like the Elgin Marbles, stolen from Greece by a British crook and still stubbornly held on to in London; the systematic vandalism in Gaza has made the salvation of this trove, for keeping somewhere secure, a blessing to human civilisation. When governments move to recognise a Palestinian state, it gives proof of the deep heritage and culture behind it.

From the brochures:

...the exhibition “Treasures saved from Gaza. 5,000 years of history”... unveiling a selection of 130 masterpieces from the city of Gaza.

...priceless pieces, including the Abu Bureij Mosaic... The exhibition reveals the prestigious past of this Palestinian city, dating back to the Bronze Age, as well as the many archaeological sites it is home to that are currently in danger.

They were sourced for the exhibition from a private collection and a museum in Geneva.

The *Abu Bureij Mosaic (Photo courtesy of Brigitte Duffield)*

Anti-culture — bombardments on a massive scale

The level of destructiveness reached in Gaza testifies to developments with munitions. Famously, or infamously, by the 1970s it was being claimed that the Americans were able to drop a higher equivalent tonnage of explosive on Vietnam than was dropped altogether over Europe in World War II.

Their “super bombs” used in “shock and awe” attacks on Taliban positions in Afghanistan in 2001, as advertised, blew away whole hillsides. In Gaza, highrise dwellings, mosques and office buildings are brought down in a minute.

Yet, newer generation “conventional” explosives are being worked on to create even higher yield and more extensive destruction, kilogram by kilogram.

The diabolical chemistry includes the development of power-packed, high-energy units called polynitropolycyclic cages; high-energy-high-density cyclic nitramine explosive material, where research is wrestling with problems of “sensitivity”, to get a more effective initiation of the bang; and RDX, cyclic nitramine, known as a highly toxic contaminant of air and soil, delivering an additional dimension of harm.

The United States stays in the forefront of such work and passes on high-tech materiel to Israel. In the case of the bombing of the three main nuclear development sites in Iran on 22 June, it undertook to carry out the missions itself, using 14-tonne GBU-57A/B MOP, or “bunker buster” bombs. These are exclusive to the U.S., delivered by specialised vehicles — Tomahawk cruise missiles and B2 stealth bombers.

The bombs penetrate concrete to 60 metres, needed to get to the underground nuclear complexes, taking them out of service. A block buster deployed by the Israelis was inadequate, requiring repeated pounding to get through six metres each strike. The attacks on the nuclear facilities had been anticipated for some years, Israel pressing for access to the “bunker buster” since its early development.

The initial bombardments in 1917, bad enough, destructive enough, were a pale shadow of these still-expanding contrivances put into the field in 2025. How do effectively defenceless civilians stand up to it and manage to survive at all?

Then and now: The destruction of a Gazan church (Photo courtesy of Brigitte Duffield)

Counterpoint

A poignant counterpoint, a rejoinder on the question of destructiveness, resilience, suffering and lives blown away, mostly young lives, is inside the Judisches Museum Frankfurt — the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt am Main. Located in an elegant, extended former Rothschild Palace, it sets out a narrative of the community being embraced and integrated into German life, then betrayed, subjugated, and, for the most part, murdered by the Nazi state. Included is the collection of a local family, that of Anne Frank. The telling is factual and intelligent, no need for rhetoric.

Where is the link with the dreadful deeds being committed in the name of the Jewish state, in Gaza and the West Bank? It is firstly the attack on Israel of 7 October 2023, the invocation of it is more than only an excuse for the barbaric waste it has provoked. If it is as well, an abiding sense of victimhood, and “never again”, come what may, it is a bad omen for future times, because neither will the Palestinian Arabs now under the guns be prepared, or able to forget.

Rights and wrongs?

If you acknowledge a right of conquest, consider the myth of a Jewish prior claim to the land. Blinkered fanatics on the Israeli side are content to justify the conquest of the land through a simplistic reading of scripture: the God of Abraham promised the land to them and nobody else. The scripture in question is broadly the Exodus story in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, produced nearly 2,500 years ago.

An unblinkered, critical modern reading, admittedly not over-informed by other readings, can make you more cautious. One proposition is to do with how the conquest went, where the Israelite tribes, after a series of victories, crossed the river and commenced a rapidly successful war of siege and displacement.

Crucially, in the story, God was behind them, it seems even personified as interceding in the field of battle. Certainly, as the story tells, they were themselves convinced of this divine complicity and direction. Also crucially, here is a key point, so were the defenders, the Canaanites. They had heard of the approaching juggernaut; they were told God was empowering their enemy, lending his invincibly strong arm in combat. More crucially, they believed it — and so had no chance.

The difference in 2025 is that the overpowered defenders this time do not believe that. There is no such psychological fault line, no submissiveness in the mind. The emotions are different: beyond the anger and plain indignation, you might now expect disgust and contempt. It is tragically the kind of outrage that will keep.

Amongst Dr Lee Duffield’s vast journalistic experience, he has served as ABC's European correspondent. He is also an esteemed academic and member of the editorial advisory board of Pacific Journalism Review and elected member of the University of Queensland Senate.