Outside the Locus of Control: Palestinian Digital Archives Resist Israeli Settler-Colonial Erasure
Keywords: 
digital archives
Palestinian liberation
Zionist settler colonialism
Israeli occupation
Looting
access
memory
knowledge
oral testimony
Abstract: 

This article examines Palestinian digital archiving in the context of the Israeli regime’s settler-colonial suppression and erasure of Palestinian knowledge. Looking closely at the efforts of three digital archives, the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive, the Palestinian Oral History Archive, and the Palestine Poster Project Archives, it argues that Palestinian digital archival projects, despite structural and technical limitations, serve to safeguard Palestinian knowledges and histories from Zionist violence. Noting examples of Israel’s looting, destruction, and closure of physical Palestinian archives, the author posits that researchers should use digital archives in tandem with materials accessed in Israeli colonial archives to challenge dominant and distorted Zionist narratives, and to fill in the knowledge gaps in the long arc of the struggle for Palestinian liberation.

Author biography: 

Roxy Moon is a master’s student at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information. Their research centers on military and nation-state propaganda, colonial knowledge production through artifacts and archives, and counter-archival projects.