"The act of epistemicide is part of genocide: it includes not only the destruction of existing knowledge as part of an “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part,” but the ability of a population to produce new knowledge. Thus, South Africa’s petition against Israel in the International Court of Justice alleged not just that “Israel has left Gaza City’s main public library in ruins,” had “damaged or destroyed countless bookshops, publishing houses and libraries and hundreds of educational facilities” and bombed “every one of Gaza’s four universities.” It also noted how “Israel has killed leading Palestinian academics” and that “Palestinian journalists are being killed at a rate significantly higher than has occurred in any conflict in the past 100 years.”
Palestinians are being deprived of not just what journalists immediately share with them, but of the possibility of building new knowledge and political realities which might flow from journalism. It may be happening through different and far less lethal means in the United States, but the closure of our libraries and the demise of alt-weekly newspapers and indie publications are also foreclosing the ability for many Americans to produce new knowledge and political realities in the metropole."
~As Journalists Are Murdered in Gaza Their Counterparts Lose Jobs in America by Steven W. Thrasher