// UK indie bookstores rally to help rebuild Gaza’s biggest bookshop after the IDF destroyed it last week
// At the time of writing, the crowdfunding campaign had raised $134,478 out of a target of $250,000
Several independent bookstores around the UK have donated to a crowdfunding appeal to rebuild Gaza’s biggest bookshop after the Israeli Defence Force destroyed it last week.
The Samir Mansour Library was among the scores of buildings across Gaza targeted and destroyed by the Israeli missiles last week.
The main online fundraiser established to help rebuild the bookshop is being run by human rights lawyers Mahvish Rukhsana and Clive Stafford Smith, also the founder of not-for-profit organisation Reprieve.
According to The Bookseller, Dorset bookshop Little Toller, West Yorkshire’s Bluemoose Books, and Indie Bookshops UK – an online independent bookshop directory – are among the UK book retailers to have pledged support to the rebuilding campaign.
At the time of writing, the crowdfunding campaign had raised $134,478 out of a target of $250,000 (£177,000).
All the funds from the campaign will be given to the bookshop owner Samir Mansour to help him rebuild his business, which had also acted as a community hub and publishing house for Palestinians in Gaza.
The Samir Mansour Library was reduced to rubble a few days before a ceasefire was agreed between Hamas and the Israeli government.
The ceasefire came after 11 days of fighting between the two groups, which ended the latest round of violence in the besieged Gaza Strip since Israel placed the area under sea, land and air blockade in 2007.
Israeli measures in occupied East Jerusalem – such as the impending forced expulsion of several Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighbourhoods and police violence against unarmed Palestinian worshippers at al-Aqsa Mosque – prompted Hamas to fire rockets that hit the outskirts of Jerusalem before Israel escalated its response in Gaza.
The latest round of violence led to at least 250 Palestinians in Gaza being killed by Israeli missiles and almost 2000 were injured, while Hamas’ rockets killed 12 Israelis.
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