A decade ago I was on a speaking tour in Washington DC with Husam el Nounou, administrative director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program. I will never forget while exploring the National Museum of the American Indian, he suddenly left in tears. As we stood in front of the large stone edifice he explained this is what he fears for Palestinians, that we will mostly know their culture and history through static dioramas reflecting a reality that exists only in the past, while the remaining population is left to eke out a desperate existence living on reservations…
This deliberate state-sponsored erasure of Palestinian voices and the evidence of their centuries old existence thus constitutes a form of historical genocide, of attempting to destroy the memory of a people’s history and thus the people themselves. I suggest that refusing to forget is thus a deeply political act.
Continue reading at http://mondoweiss.net/2015/06/memoricide-museum-project