archives

Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir attends the weekly government conference, held at the Western Wall tunnels in Jerusalem's Old City, May 21, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Avoiding an Israeli fascist isn’t the brave move the EU thinks it is

Cancelling an event with Ben Gvir does not make up for a history of European interests that give Israel the green light to carry on with its illegal policies.

By Eitay Mack May 22, 2023

The leaders of the 1967 Greek coup d'état: Brigadier Stylianos Pattakos, Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos and Colonel Nikolaos Makarezos. (Unknown/CC BY-SA 4.0)

The suppressed history of Israel’s support for the brutal Greek junta

Declassified files reveal the extent of Israel’s ties with the regime known for torturing and murdering thousands of its citizens in the 1960s-70s.

By Eitay Mack April 28, 2023

Palestinians surrender after Israeli troops capture the Palestinian city of Ramla during the 1948 war, July 11, 1948. (David Eldan)

PODCAST: The Israeli researchers unearthing their country’s dark past

Lior Yavne and Adam Raz discuss the challenges they face in trying to tell the true history that successive Israeli governments have been so intent on hiding.

By Henriette Chacar June 30, 2021

Latest

Human rights lawyer and Mizrahi feminist activist Sapir Sluzker-Amran. (Shiraz Grinbaum)

The Mizrahi feminist archiving the ‘unspoken histories’ of Israel-Palestine

Sapir Sluzker-Amran talks about starting a civic archive that centers disadvantaged groups and challenges the dominant Israeli narrative.

By Natasha Soffer-Roth July 10, 2020

Illustrative photo of Palestinian refugees fleeing during the Nakba.

Don’t wait for Israeli archives to prove what Palestinians already know

Israeli authorities are deliberately concealing historical documents to undermine evidence of the state’s dark and violent origins. And the world is still falling for it. The village of Safsaf (“willow” in Arabic) appears on page 490 of the newest edition of Walid Khalidi’s All That Remains, a seminal book that catalogues 418 Palestinian communities that were…

By Amjad Iraqi July 7, 2019

Illustrative photo of archived documents. (Shutterstock.com)

Israel’s state archivist opens up about censorship, digitization

Israel’s state archivist confirms that nearly half a million pages have been sent to the IDF Censor, which has redacted historical documents that already saw the light of day, and talks about why he didn’t foresee the storm that erupted over his decision to end access to paper documents. Israel’s state archivist did not foresee…

By Haggai Matar April 13, 2016

Illustrative photo of the digitization of archives. (Lilyana Vynogradova / Shutterstock.com)

The end of history at Israel’s state archives?

As part of a welcome digitization process, the Israel State Archives will soon revoke access to original paper documents, and the documents it puts online will be subject to military censorship. But academics and civil liberties groups are fighting back. (Correction appended below) Israel’s State Archives (ISA) will no longer give researchers and the public…

By Haggai Matar April 12, 2016

Traces of the Nakba: Book review of ‘Stone, Paper’

Despite attempts to conceal the memory of stones in the village of Hunin, papers in the kibbutz archives left a trail revealing the hidden war. In his bold book, Stone, Paper, Tomer Gardi places history in its present, as a driving political force, while rejecting the practice of historical writing. By Yehouda Shenhav | Translated…

By Haokets March 27, 2012