Words by Rhyus Goldman PZ ’26

Graphic by Ben Connolly PZ ’26

On Nov. 22, Claremont Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) hosted “Palestine Through the Archives,” an exhibit in the Honnold/Mudd Library Founders Room providing students with archival materials and primary documents on pre-Nakba Palestine and the creation of the Israeli state.

The exhibit, organized by Abigail Gross PZ ’25, featured drawings, images, maps, European travelogues to the Holy Land, and religious perspectives from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Alongside these were documents on the establishment of the Israeli state and anti-Zionist perspectives written in the mid-20th century.

“Looking for a better historical understanding of Palestine, the Nakba, and the establishment of the State of Israel?” Claremont JVP and 7C Events for Palestine wrote in a joint Instagram post on Nov. 17. “Join us … to learn from primary source documents.” 

At the event, Gross highlighted the importance of maintaining an archival history of Palestine as a result of historical and ongoing “scholasticide” — the systematic destruction of cultural and educational resources — in Palestine.

 “Since October 7th, 2023, the Israeli government has targeted and destroyed much of the cultural heritage in Gaza,” Gross said. “Every university has been destroyed as well as libraries, museums, archive systems, and information workers who have been martyred.”

She also quoted Salman Abu Sitta, a Palestinian researcher who spoke on the need to preserve Palestinian cultural history after his British visa labeled his nationality as “uncertain.”

“What do we collect all that data for? Just for history books?” Abu Sitta said. “No, we must make it the foundation for the future.”

In an interview with The Outback, Gross explained the need to approach archival materials critically.

“Every single person and organization has their bias,” Gross said. “The victors write history, [but] archivists must keep looking for the gaps. Everything can be problematized because nothing and no one has a complete perspective. Problematization, or the act of questioning assumptions and biases in historical materials, became a key takeaway of the exhibit.”

Gross also urged attendees to consider not just the content of archival materials but also their context: who created them, the institutions behind their publication, and the voices excluded from the narrative.

One aspect of the exhibit focused on the absence of historical census data on Palestinian communities in Latin America despite large migrations to the area. Chile, for example, hosts the largest Palestinian diaspora population outside of the Middle East, with around 500,000 people today. According to the exhibit, this gap coincides with early settler-colonial narratives that displaced Palestinians during the Nakba in 1948 and subsequent events like the Six-Day War in 1967. These migrations left many Palestinians scattered across the globe, yet documentation of their diaspora is limited, which the exhibit stated reflects the biases and priorities of historical record-keeping systems.

Reflecting on the exhibit’s broader implications, Gross shared her initial hesitation in including certain materials. 

“I encountered all of these western narratives that said such awful things about the perspectives and land of Palestine,” Gross said. “It is important, however, to look at these western imperial perceptions of the land from the past because we normally look at the past from post-Nakba, but these were real documents that shaped narratives.”

Ultimately, Gross affirmed the need for critical archival work to understand what is happening in the present day. 

“As these crucial records are being erased, we must act to preserve important histories,” Gross said.