What does it mean to erase a people - nation, culture, identity?

I'll start this column with a question for you, dear reader. What connects you to your country, and makes you feel that it is yours? What gives you a sense of identity and belonging? These are, of course, physical things - where you live, where you were born, where your family and friends live. But underlying those practical aspects, I guess, are all the other things that you don't think about, that you take for granted. Music, literature, humor, art, cinema and TV - all abstract points of identity that form the connective tissue between you and your country.

I ask because it is a consequence of the question "what does a nation do?" - "what is erasing it?" And what is happening in Gaza has made the issue urgent. Because in addition to the horrors of death and displacement, something else is happening - something existential, rarely acknowledged and potentially irreversible.

It looks like this. Earlier this month, Israeli airstrikes destroyed the oldest mosque in Gaza. The Omari Mosque was originally a Byzantine church from the fifth century and was an icon of Gaza: four thousand square meters of history, architecture and cultural heritage. But it was also a vibrant place of contemporary practice and worship. A 45-year-old Gaza resident told Reuters he "prayed and played there all my childhood". Israel, he said, "is trying to erase our memories."

The Church of Saint Porphyry, the oldest in Gaza, also dating back to the fifth century and believed to be the third oldest church in the world, was damaged in a second attack in October. It housed displaced persons, among them members of the oldest Christian community in the world, which dates back to the first century. So far, more than 100 heritage sites in Gaza have been damaged or razed to the ground. Among them are a 2.000-year-old Roman cemetery and the Rafa Museum, which was dedicated to the region's long and mixed religious and architectural heritage.

As the past is uprooted, so is the future. The Islamic University of Gaza, the first higher education institution established in the Gaza Strip in 1978, which trains doctors and engineers in Gaza, among others, was destroyed, along with more than 200 schools. Sufian Tajeh, the rector of the university, was killed along with his family in an airstrike. He was the Chairman of UNESCO for Physical, Astrophysical and Space Sciences in Palestine. Other prominent members of the academic community who were killed include the microbiologist, Dr. Muhamed Eid Shabir, and the noted poet and writer Dr. Rifat Alarir, whose poem, "If I Must Die," was widely shared after his death.

"If I have to die," he wrote, "let it be a story." But even that story, a story that bears witness to the truth, that will be woven into the national consciousness and history of Gaza and Palestine, will struggle to be told accurately. Because they also kill journalists. As of last week, more than 60. Some of those who survived, like Wael al-Dahduh of Al Jazeera, had to continue working despite the death of their families. Last week, Dahduh himself was injured in an airstrike on a school. His cameraman did not survive. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a US nonprofit, said those reporting on the war risk not only death or injury, but also "multiple attacks, threats, cyberattacks, censorship and the killing of family members."

So far, more than 100 heritage sites in Gaza have been damaged or razed to the ground. These include a 2.000-year-old Roman cemetery and the Rafa Museum, which was dedicated to the region's long and mixed religious and architectural heritage.

As the ability to tell these stories publicly has come under attack, so have the private rituals of grieving and keeping memories under attack. According to a New York Times investigation, Israeli ground forces are bulldozing cemeteries in an offensive in the Gaza Strip, and have destroyed at least six. Ahmed Masood, a British Palestinian writer from Gaza, posted a picture of himself on his father's grave, alongside a video of its ruins. "This is the cemetery in the Jabalija camp," he wrote, where his father was buried. “I went to visit him in May. Israeli tanks have now destroyed it, and my father's grave is gone. I won't be able to visit or talk to him again.”

A memory gap is created. Libraries and museums are razed to the ground, and what is lost in burned documents joins the wider loss of record keeping. Meanwhile, the scale of the murders is so great that entire extended families are disappearing. The result is like tearing pages from a book. Dina Matar, a professor at SOAS University in London, told the "Financial Times" that "the result of such a loss is the erasure of shared memories and identities of those who survive. Remembering is important. These are important elements when you want to put together histories and stories from ordinary lives.”

Memory is important, and it is easy to forget, amid the scenes of death and destruction since October, that the Gaza Strip is a real place that, although it existed behind a fence and under strict restrictions, was not just an "open air prison." It has Mediterranean cities with tree-lined boulevards and bougainvillea, and a coastline that offered respite from the heat and blackouts. Much of it has now been destroyed or bulldozed.

It is also a place where artists, musicians, poets and novelists have thrived, which is only natural among people who have the opportunity to express themselves, regardless of difficult circumstances. And they are disappearing now. Heba Zagout, a painter of holy places and Palestinian women in traditional embroidered clothing, was killed in October, just a few days after posting a video on the Internet in which she said: "I consider art a message that I convey to the outside world through my expression of the Palestinian ideal and Palestinian identity."

Mohamed Sami Karika, another artist, hid in the hospital and posted on Facebook that he was documenting the experience, "to convey the news and events happening in the hospital, capturing a series of painful details with my phone's camera, including photography, recording, voice, writing and drawing, etc… I collect many of these stories using different techniques”. Three days later, he was killed when a missile hit the hospital.

This is what it would look like, to wipe out a nation. In short, to erase the architecture of belonging that we all take so much for granted, so that no matter how many Gazans survive, over time there is less and less that binds them into a valid whole. This is what it would look like when they are denied the opportunity to tell their story, to create their art, to enjoy music, song and poetry, and to be denied the underlying history that lives in their landmarks, mosques, churches and even their graves.

The author is a "Guardian" columnist.

Translation: A. Š.