Irreplaceable Religious, Cultural Sites Are Collateral Damage In War In Gaza
A revered mosque that dates back to the 5th century is the latest treasured, cultural and religious landmark and symbol of antiquity to fall as collateral damage in the war between Israel and Hamas.
An Israeli air attack largely destroyed the Great Omari Mosque in Gaza in an air attack on Dec. 7, 2023. If history is any sign, the mosque will be rebuilt as it has been many times through the eons after attacks, both manmade and natural. Its contents, however, are irreplaceable.
The Israeli attack began after Hamas launched a surprise assault against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people. Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas have resulted in the destruction or damage of at least 195 heritage sites, according to a lawsuit filed against Israel before the International Court of Justice. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has reported that 43 religious or historic sites have been damaged since Oct. 7.
Israel has said the invasion have been necessary to dismantle Hamas. In the case of the mosque, the Israeli military said it was a Hamas command center, a necessary military target that was fed by a tunnel shaft.
“Hamas has spent years embedding its own terror infrastructure into and under civilian areas, including hospitals, mosques, schools and other religious and historical sites,’ the Israel military said in a statement.
Hamas has said the destruction is a part of a planned cultural genocide to eliminate the Palestinian people.
During World War II, the Allies and Axis powers destroyed many important cultural sites in Europe and Asia. In 1942, the Nazi Lufwaffe leveled the Royal Opera House in Valletta, Malta. And in 1945, the United States hollowed out the Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall when it dropped the first atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan.
As a result, international agreements the Hague Convention was signed in the ashes of World War II, declared that targeting cultural sites is a war crime. The Hague Convention is the world’s most significant legal protection of cultural property and has been ratified by more than 130 countries, including the U.S. The agreement was 70 years old on May 14, 2024.
But the Hague Convention has not stopped military groups from targeting and damaging cultural sites in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and West Africa.
The U.S. went as far as to threaten cultural sites in Iraq on January 4, 2020, when then-president trump tweeted that if Iran retaliated against the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, “the United States will hit 52 Iranian sites, some at a very high level and important to Iran and the Iranian culture, very fast and very hard.” The threat was widely described by many as a war crime under the Hague Convention.
Two days later, Defense Secretary Mark Esper distanced The Pentagon from trump’s threats, and said the U.S. will follow the laws of armed conflict, which prohibit targeting cultural sites. By January 7, Trump backed away from his threats.
Goals of the Hague Convention are implemented by the non-profit organization, Blue Shield, which posts its identifying marker on rooftops during wars to identify buildings with substantial cultural value.
The Hague Convention has been expanded to include a category known as “enhanced protection,” to be applied to cultural properties so invaluable that they are deemed immune from military attack only if an attack is the “only feasible means of terminating the use of property [in that way].” Currently 13 cultural properties from eight nations are on the Enhanced Protection List. The sites are in Azerbaijan, Belgium, Cambodia, Cyprus, Georgia, Italy, Lithuania, and Mali.
The destruction of important cultural sites in Gaza is the latest in a long line of devastation throughout history.
Gaza is strategically located on the Mediterranean’s eastern shores and has always been in a prime position on the trade routes from Eurasia to Africa. Its ports made it a regional hub for commerce and culture. Since at least 1300 BC, the Via Maris — a route running from Heliopolis in ancient Egypt, cutting across Gaza’s western coastline and then crossing into Syrian lands — was the main route that travelers would take on their journeys to Damascus. The land also became the site of numerous places of worship.
The Great Omari Mosque, also known as the Great Mosque of Gaza, located in Gaza City, was described as “beautiful” by Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan geographer in the 14th century. The mosque totaled 44,000 sq ft., the largest and oldest mosque in all of Gaza.
Named after the second caliph of Islam, Omar bin Khattab, it was built in the seventh century on top of the ruins of an ancient church built in 406, which itself was built over the foundations of a pagan temple to the Canaanite fertility god, Dagon. The Book of Judges says Sampson was toppled on the site and legend claims that Samson is buried under the present mosque.
The Byzantines erected a church there in the 5th century. After the Rashidun conquest in the 7th century, it was transformed into a mosque. In 1033, an earthquake toppled the mosque’s minaret. The Crusaders built a large church on the site in 1149 but it was mostly destroyed in 1187 by the Ayyubids, under Saladin. It was rebuilt as a mosque by the Mamluks in the early 13th century.
In 1260, along came the Mongols, who again destroyed the holy site. It was restored only to fall again by an earthquake at the end of the century. The Great Mosque was restored again by the Ottomans roughly 300 years later.
The Great Mosque was severely damaged by Allied forces while attacking the Ottoman positions in Gaza during World War I. The British claimed that there were Ottoman munitions stored in the mosque and it was destroyed when the munitions were ignited by the bombardment. The mosque was restored in 1925 by the Supreme Muslim Council.
A series of museums in Gaza have been destroyed, including the Al Qarara Museum in Khan Younis, which dates back to the Canaanite era. The museum was opened in 2016 by Mohamed and Najla Abu Lahia, a husband and wife team. The collection consisted of about 3,000 artefacts dating back to the Canaanites, the Bronze Age civilization that lived in Gaza and across much of the Levant in the second century BC. The Levant refers to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of West Asia and core territory of the Middle East. Shards of pottery and smashed glass were all that remained after an October air strike.
Another was the Rafah Museum, where a 30-year project was completed to curate a collection of ancient coins, copper plates and jewelry, making it Gaza’s main museum of Palestinian heritage. It was destroyed in an air strike on October 11.
The 13th-century Qasr Al-Basha, or Pasha’s Palace in Gaza City, was converted into a museum in 2010, housing a collection of artefacts from different periods of Gaza’s history. The site’s walls, courtyard and gardens were damaged in Israeli air strikes on Dec. 11.
The two-story structure was built by Mamluk ruler Sultan Zahir Baybars in the mid-13th century, as a seat of power and defense against the Crusaders and Mongol armies. During the 17th century, it was used by Ottoman rulers and once served as lodgings for French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799 when he entered Gaza to try to stave off an expected Ottoman invasion of Egypt, where the French held court.
Also damaged was the Library of the Great Omari Mosque in Gaza City. The library was once filled with rare manuscripts, including old copies of the Quran, biographies of Prophet Muhammad and ancient books on philosophy, medicine and Sufi mysticism. Established by Sultan Zahir Baybars and opened in 1277, the library once had a collection of 20,000 books and manuscripts. Many of the rare books and manuscripts were lost or destroyed during the Crusades and World War I. The remaining 62 books were destroyed in a strike on the mosque on December 8.
The Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius was located in Zeitoun for 16 centuries and is considered the third oldest church in the world. It was struck and damaged on October 19 and 17 people were killed when the roof of the church caved. It was built in 425 on the foundations of an ancient pagan site and was named after the Byzantine saint who had made it his mission to close down the pagan temples. The church was turned into a mosque in the seventh century but reverted back to a church in the 1150s when Crusaders reclaimed it. Renovated in 1856, it has remained a place of worship for Gaza’s Christian community.
The Hammam al-Sammara, or Samaritan Bathhouse, was destroyed on December 8. It had pre-dated Islam and was likely established by the Samaritans, a religious sect of ethnic Jews who lived in the Zeitoun area, also known as the Jewish Quarter. The area had a thriving Jewish community until Crusader rule in the 12th century. The last Palestinian Jewish family lived in the neighborhood until the 1960s.
Anthedon or “Flower City” in ancient Greek, was a city near Gaza conquered sometime between 103 and 76 BCE by Alexander Jannaeus, ruler of the largest and strongest known Jewish state outside of biblical sources. In 2013, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, bulldozed part of the harbor to expand its military training zone. The site was completely destroyed by direct shelling during the current war.
Major cultural and historical centers that have fallen in war through the years include:
· The iconic, Royal Opera House, also known as the Royal Theatre was built in 1866 in Valletta, Malta. The interior was extensively damaged by fire in 1873 but was restored by 1877. The theatre was destroyed by bombing in 1942 and the ruins were redesigned and in 2013 the theater again started functioning as a performance venue, called Piazza Teatru Rjal.
· The Hiroshima Peace Memorial originally the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall is now referred to as the Genbaku Dome, Atomic Bomb Dome or A-Bomb Dome. Part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, Japan, the site was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. The building was the only structure that remained standing in the area around the atomic bombing. The hall serves as a memorial to more than 140,000 people killed in the bombing. It is permanently kept in a state of preserved ruin as a reminder of the destructive effects of nuclear warfare.
· The city of Dubrovnik, Croatia dates back to the 7th century, when Romans and Slavs settled on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It grew into a major trading power, and in the 19th century Lord Byron dubbed it the “Pearl of the Adriatic.” In 1979, UNESCO designated the “Old City” or “Old Town” part of Dubrovnik as a World Heritage site. The city was heavily damaged in 1991 and 1992, during the siege of Dubrovnik, a part of the Yugoslav Wars. In 2005, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia sentenced the former Yugoslav general Pavle Strugar to eight years in prison for war crimes, including the destruction of historic monuments in Dubrovnik.
· Vijećnica (City Hall) of Sarajevo, Bosnia, dates to the 1890s. Its architecture was inspired by Islamic designs, including the Mamluk architecture that flourished between the 13th and 16th centuries in Cairo, Egypt. In 1949, the building was converted it into the National Library. In 1992, it was destroyed in a fire during the Siege of Sarajevo, Almost two million books were lost. The city restored library and reopened it in 2014.
· Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan were once the world’s tallest monuments of Buddha. Carved into the side of a cliff in the sixth century, the Buddhas were known as a holy site. In 629 A.D., the Chinese traveller Xuanzang described tens of thousands of monks gathered near the statues. In 2001, the Taliban bombed and destroyed the Buddhas as per a command by spiritual leader Mullah Mohammed Omar who ordered the destruction of idolatrous statues in Afghanistan.
· Djinguereber Mosque of Timbuktu, was built by the Mali Empire during the reign of Mansa Musa in the 14th century. Made from pounded earth and wood, the mosque suffered minor damage in 2012 when members of the militant Ansar Dine group attacked the city. The group damaged two of Djinguereber’s tombs along with Islamic shrines. In 2016, Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi pleaded guilty in the International Criminal Court to damaging the sites, marking the court’s first prosecution for the destruction of cultural sites as a war crime.
· The Great Mosque of Aleppo, Syria was built between the eighth and 13th centuries is believed to contain the remains of the prophet Zechariah, father of John the Baptist. The Great Mosque’s minaret was built in the 11th century and in 2013, it was destroyed amid fighting in the Syrian Civil War. The mosque was occupied at the time by anti-government forces, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime blamed the damage on fighters from an al-Qaeda-linked group. Rebels, meanwhile, claimed the site was damaged by incoming Syrian Army fire.
· Temple of Bel was a major religious site built in the first century in the ancient city of Palmyra, Syria. The site contained more than 1,000 columns, 500 tombs and a Roman aqueduct. In 2015, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, leveled the temple, after destroying the Temple of Baalshamin, another ancient religious site in Palmyra.
· The Gates of Nineveh, Iraq were part of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh which dates to the seventh century B.C. The city was historically guarded by walls and multiple gates, including two most prominent gates known as the “Gate of God.” In 2016, ISIS destroyed both of the gates as part of its ongoing campaign against cultural sites and relics.
· During the Khmer Rouge dictatorship in Cambodia from April 1975 to January 1979, more than 3,300 temples and 130 mosques were severely damaged along with all 73 Catholic churches and many other sites of religious or cultural significance.