The mass slaughter and destruction Israel has wrought in Gaza over the last five months suggests a clear intention to make the land entirely uninhabitable for the 2.2 million Palestinians who live there. So far, more than thirty thousand Palestinians have been killed, more than two-thirds of whom are women and children.

All of this has been recorded with astounding courage in videos, images, and text by Palestinian journalists in Gaza. Nobody will be able to look back and say they did not know what was happening.

Faced with this, it is difficult to talk about what else is being destroyed in Gaza. Yet as our screens increasingly fill with images of grey rubble, buildings desiccated by bombardment, and vast areas of land filled with tents in which displaced Palestinians are taking shelter, what is missing from the discussion is any engagement with Gaza’s rich historic and contemporary cultural heritage, and the way it is being systematically destroyed.