Last Sunday, some 350 artists and cultural workers took part in an action outside the main entrance of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
From murdering children, bombing hospitals, rendering people homeless to using starvation as a weapon of war, looking back at 100 days of Israeli war on Gaza.
The settler-colonial Zionist entity has in its genocidal war on Gaza since Oct. 7 destroyed many famed cultural heritage sites in the besieged territory.
As a teenager in the 1980s, I watched the construction of the intricately designed Rashad al-Shawa Cultural Center in Gaza City, named after one of Gaza’s greatest public figures, and its theater, grand hall, public library, printing press and cultural salon. Students and researchers, scholars and artists from across the Gaza Strip came to visit it, and so did President Bill Clinton in 1998. The center was the gem of Gaza City. Watching it being built inspired me to become an engineer, which led to a career as a professor and, in the footsteps of al-Shawa, as mayor of Gaza City.