How Palestinians Are Building a Digital Archive That Can’t Be Erased
How Palestinians Are Building a Digital Archive That Can’t Be Erased
巴勒斯坦人如何建立一个无法被抹除的数字档案库
Palestinian culture has been looted, destroyed, and displaced for decades. Since October 2023, however, the destruction of Gaza’s cultural institutions has accelerated, prompting a team in the occupied West Bank to build something they hope cannot be seized or erased: a digital archive of Palestinian memory.
几十年来，巴勒斯坦文化一直遭受掠夺、破坏和流离失所的命运。然而，自2023年10月以来，加沙文化机构的损毁速度进一步加快，这促使约旦河西岸的一个团队开始构建他们希望无法被查封或抹除的东西：一个关于巴勒斯坦记忆的数字档案库。
“Within a week, Israel bombed two art galleries, seven museums, two main archives in Gaza, and hundreds of archaeological sites,” says Amer Shomali, a prominent visual artist and general director of the Palestinian Museum. “This battle of trying to erase the Palestinian culture and Palestinian memory—it’s not something theoretical.”
“在一周内，以色列轰炸了加沙的两家美术馆、七家博物馆、两个主要档案馆以及数百处考古遗址，”著名视觉艺术家、巴勒斯坦博物馆馆长阿梅尔·肖马利（Amer Shomali）说道，“这种试图抹除巴勒斯坦文化和巴勒斯坦记忆的斗争，绝非理论上的假设。”
Shomali says that roughly 80 percent of the country’s national collections have been looted, destroyed, or remain under Israeli control. Against that backdrop, the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit has become both a physical repository of Palestinian heritage and the center of an increasingly ambitious digital preservation effort.
肖马利表示，该国约80%的国家藏品已被掠夺、摧毁或仍处于以色列的控制之下。在此背景下，位于比尔泽特（Birzeit）的巴勒斯坦博物馆不仅成为了巴勒斯坦遗产的实体收藏地，也成为了一个日益雄心勃勃的数字保护工作的中心。
Designed by New York–based Heneghan Peng architects, the same firm behind Egypt’s Grand Egyptian Museum, the building is home to numerous Palestinian collections, including photographs by Khalil Raad and murals by Vera Tamari.
该建筑由总部位于纽约的 Heneghan Peng 建筑事务所设计（该事务所也是埃及大博物馆的设计方），馆内收藏了大量巴勒斯坦藏品，包括哈利勒·拉德（Khalil Raad）的摄影作品和维拉·塔马里（Vera Tamari）的壁画。
The magnificent museum stands in defiance here, among gardens of native flowers and cascading terraces. Yet, Shomali says, the site sits between various checkpoints, making it hard for some Palestinians to access.
这座宏伟的博物馆矗立于此，周围环绕着本土花卉花园和层叠的露台，显得格外坚毅。然而，肖马利指出，该地点位于多个检查站之间，导致一些巴勒斯坦人难以进入。
A 2025 report by the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem says at least 2,400 archeological sites in the West Bank have been taken over by Israel.
耶路撒冷应用研究所（ARIJ）2025年的一份报告显示，约旦河西岸至少有2400处考古遗址已被以色列接管。
Meanwhile, Reuters reported in June that Israeli lawmakers are advancing legislation that would place ancient sites in the occupied territory under the Israeli Ministry of Heritage, a move that Palestinians and Israeli rights groups say amounts to de facto annexation and could further expand Israeli control over Palestinian heritage sites.
与此同时，路透社6月报道称，以色列立法者正在推进一项立法，将占领区内的古迹置于以色列遗产部的管辖之下。巴勒斯坦人和以色列权利组织认为，此举等同于事实上的吞并，可能会进一步扩大以色列对巴勒斯坦遗产地的控制。
As of March 24, 2026, Unesco had verified damage to 164 cultural sites in Gaza since October 7, 2023, including historical buildings, religious sites, museums, and archaeological sites. Many more cultural artifacts and personal histories have likely been lost amid the war, mass displacement, and the destruction of entire communities.
截至2026年3月24日，联合国教科文组织已核实自2023年10月7日以来，加沙有164处文化遗址受损，包括历史建筑、宗教场所、博物馆和考古遗址。在战争、大规模流离失所和整个社区的毁灭中，更多的文化文物和个人历史很可能已经遗失。
“It was a continuous battle all the time between us and them,” says Shomali about historical efforts to archive Palestinian artifacts amid Israeli aggression since 1948. “We document, they loot; but every time we document, we document with less vivid memory.”
“这始终是我们与他们之间的一场持续不断的斗争，”肖马利在谈到自1948年以来在以色列侵略背景下保存巴勒斯坦文物的历史努力时说，“我们记录，他们掠夺；但我们每一次记录，记忆都变得不再那么鲜活。”
It is one of the reasons the museum turned to technology. In 2018, the team began building what Shomali describes as an “unlootable archive”—a digital repository designed to preserve Palestinian history beyond the walls of any single institution. “We created this platform, the Palestine Museum Digital Archive, which is an unlootable archive,” Shomali explains.
这也是博物馆转向技术的原因之一。2018年，该团队开始构建肖马利所称的“无法被掠夺的档案库”——一个旨在超越任何单一机构围墙、保存巴勒斯坦历史的数字存储库。“我们创建了这个平台，即巴勒斯坦博物馆数字档案库，这是一个无法被掠夺的档案库，”肖马利解释道。
What began with simple door-knocking—visiting families in the West Bank and asking permission to scan old photographs, letters and documents—has grown into one of the most ambitious digital preservation projects in the region.
最初只是简单的“敲门行动”——走访约旦河西岸的家庭，请求扫描旧照片、信件和文件——如今已发展成为该地区最雄心勃勃的数字保护项目之一。
The open-source archive now contains more than 500,000 digitized photographs, identification papers, diaries, maps, films, and letters, many of which were collected directly from Palestinian families and might otherwise have been lost forever.
这个开源档案库目前包含超过50万份数字化的照片、身份证件、日记、地图、电影和信件，其中许多是直接从巴勒斯坦家庭收集的，否则这些资料可能永远消失。
The Palestinian Museum’s mission is both preservation and access: to safeguard Palestinian history and make it available to those unable to visit Palestine.
巴勒斯坦博物馆的使命既是保护也是普及：守护巴勒斯坦历史，并使其能够被那些无法访问巴勒斯坦的人们所获取。
Behind the archive is a team of three full-time staff members dedicated solely to digitization, metadata, and research, supported by a wider network of volunteers. Funded through diaspora donations and partnerships with the University of California and the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the project involves extensive cataloging, translations, and linguistic proofreading. The museum is even exploring a bot capable of reading Ottoman Arabic to help process historical records.
档案库背后有一个由三名全职员工组成的团队，专门负责数字化、元数据和研究工作，并得到更广泛志愿者网络的支持。该项目通过侨民捐款以及与加州大学和格尔达·亨克尔基金会（Gerda Henkel Foundation）的合作获得资助，涉及大量的编目、翻译和语言校对工作。博物馆甚至正在探索一种能够阅读奥斯曼土耳其语的机器人，以帮助处理历史记录。
The effort reflects a broader shift in how communities under threat are using technology—not simply to preserve culture, but to build resilient, distributed archives that can outlive war, displacement, and physical destruction.
这一努力反映了受威胁群体在使用技术方面的一种更广泛的转变——不仅仅是为了保护文化，更是为了建立能够抵御战争、流离失所和物理破坏的弹性分布式档案库。
For Shomali, the archive allows Palestinians to reclaim ownership over their history. “All of a sudden, you start to have this mesh, this web of information and data, and it allows you to rewrite the history, but interestingly, bottom-up in the sense that it’s not a state archive.”
对肖马利来说，这个档案库让巴勒斯坦人能够重新夺回对自己历史的所有权。“突然之间，你开始拥有这种信息和数据的网格，它让你能够重写历史，而且有趣的是，这是一种自下而上的重写，因为它不是国家档案库。”
The museum has also taken steps to ensure the archive can survive digital attacks and even physical destruction. Multiple copies of the archive are stored around the world, creating a distributed system designed to prevent the collections from disappearing entirely.
博物馆还采取了措施，确保档案库能够抵御数字攻击甚至物理破坏。档案库的多个副本存储在世界各地，形成了一个分布式系统，旨在防止藏品彻底消失。
“We have different backups, but we keep getting cyberattacks on the website,” Shomali says. “Almost every month, we get attacked, and the website goes down, and we reinitiate it based on one of the backups we have.” “We can’t protect it from being hacked, but we can protect it from disappearing.”
“我们有不同的备份，但网站一直遭受网络攻击，”肖马利说，“几乎每个月我们都会受到攻击，网站会瘫痪，然后我们根据现有的备份重新启动它。”“我们无法阻止它被黑客攻击，但我们可以保护它不至于消失。”
The archive’s distributed nature means Palestinian history no longer exists in a single building or on a single server. Even if one copy disappears, others remain.
档案库的分布式特性意味着巴勒斯坦历史不再仅仅存在于单一建筑或单一服务器中。即使一个副本消失了，其他的依然存在。
One initiative turned the archive into what Shomali describes as “an exhibition in a box, Ikea-style.” Users can download exhibition materials, print them, and stage their own exhibitions on Palestine anywhere in the world, regardless of budget. The project has been exhibited more than 260 times, from Japan to San Francisco, and translated into five languages.
其中一项倡议将档案库变成了肖马利所说的“宜家风格的盒装展览”。用户可以下载展览材料、打印出来，并在世界任何地方举办关于巴勒斯坦的展览，无需考虑预算。该项目已在从日本到旧金山的各地展出超过260次，并被翻译成五种语言。
The archive has also become a resource for artists and curators abroad. In May 2026, artist and curator Leyya Mona Tawil used its collections to create My Name is Palestine: E
该档案库也已成为海外艺术家和策展人的资源。2026年5月，艺术家兼策展人莱亚·莫娜·塔维尔（Leyya Mona Tawil）利用其馆藏创作了《我的名字是巴勒斯坦：E》（My Name is Palestine: E）。