After being destroyed by an Israeli airstrike, a worldwide outpouring of support allowed a beloved bookshop in London to reopen.
The warning call came on 18th May last year. The Israel Defense Forces had intelligence pointing to a Hamas cell operating somewhere in the five-storey building housing Samir Mansour’s eponymously named bookshop, Gaza’s premier foreign language store.
With just hours to spare, Mansour could only watch in despair as Israeli missiles reduced his life’s work to rubble and scattered the remains of some 90,000 tomes across Gaza University Street.
Now, following an international fundraising effort that drew $250,000 (£189,000) in donations, Mansour’s beloved store – founded 22 years ago – has risen from the ashes in a new location, fewer than 100 metres from the bombed-out site of the original.
“It’s more than a bookshop: people would go in there, squat on the floor and read books, like a library,” said Anglo-American human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith. “It’s a community institution. Samir is fabulously grateful for everything people have done.”
Stafford Smith, a half-Jewish man, was inspired to coordinate the fundraising drive along with MahvishRukhsana, a fellow attorney. (“She did all the hard work,” he said. “I was just helping.”)
The couple launched an appeal via the online platform GoFundMeThe charity received almost 5,000 donations.
The shop’s books were turned into piles of torn paper, buried among ash or dust.
As well as money towards Mansour’s $340,000 (£257,000) rebuild, wellwishers worldwide donated more than 150,000 books, with tens of thousands pledged in book drives across the UK and stored in warehouses for shipping to the Gaza Strip.
The first 50,000 were delivered weeks before the opening day in February. They overcame a Brexit-related trucking shortfall to reach the target.
“It was an extraordinary response,” recalled Stafford Smith, who asked book donors to include their email address and what about the book they were donating particularly touched them.
I know that many people still believe in human coexistence and are committed to being kind to one another.
“I hoped the recipient would be able to contact them and have a human relationship,” he said. “It pains me to see how far Israel has moved from trying to reach a peaceful solution and towards thinking you can bomb the world into peace, but I know many people are still very committed to human coexistence and actually being nice to each other.”
He said that Mansour (a Palestinian) had rejected claims that a Hamas weapon facility was operating out of the same building where he used to shop.
Stafford Smith explained that the new one is important not only for Gaza but also for Israel’s people. “Samir sent us photos of the new books on his shelves, and the one that leapt out was that iconic picture on the front of the Diary of Anne Frank. “If we’re ever going to do anything about getting people to understand each other – rather than just hate each other – then it’s a fabulous thing that you have a bookshop in Gaza educating the world about the Holocaust.”
