Date : 10/03/2013
CAIRO, March 10 (KUNA) -- The Arab League on Sunday called on the
international cultural organizations to act for retrieving the Palestinian
books and relics stolen by the Israeli occupation authorities.
The League's department of Palestine and occupied Arab territories affairs,
urged, in a press release, the international community to adopt a decisive
stance against the major robberies of Palestinian heritage including boycott
of any Israeli organization or individuals involved in the stealth.
Some 40,000 Palestinian books were robbed from Jerusalem alone and the rest
30,000 books were robbed from Jaffa, Al-Naserah and other towns in the West
Bank; they are kept at the National Library of Israel, according to the
statement.
The League called for an international action against this crime,
highlighting the need to return the books to Palestine immediately as per the
provisions of the concerned international law.
The call follows reports about the discovery of a large usurpation of the
contents of Palestinian public and private libraries in 1947 by the Haganah, a
Jewish paramilitary organization in what was active during the British Mandate
of Palestine from 1920 to 1948 and became the core of the Israel Defense
Forces (IDF) later on.
In 2011 Israeli-Dutch filmmaker Benny Brunner released a documentary on
"The Great Book Robbery" which documents the Jewish usurpation of the
Palestinian heritage.
The documentary is inspired by Gish Amit's book titled "Salvage or Plunder?
Israel's 'Collection' of Private Palestinian Libraries in West Jerusalem."
Brunner stated that he was "stunned" at the appropriation of 70,000 books
by the State of Israel during the 1948 Palestinian exodus as significant to
the loss of Palestinian cultural heritage and decided to make a film on the
topic. (end)
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