Friday, April 24, 2026
6:00 PM
The Jerusalem Fund
2425 Virginia Ave NW
Washington, DC 20037
Dr. Adnan al-Bursh was one of Gaza’s best-known orthopedic surgeons, head of orthopedics at al-Shifa Hospital, a teacher of medicine, and a doctor who kept treating patients as Gaza’s hospitals came under attack. He was arrested after the raid on al-Awda Hospital and later died in Israeli detention under circumstances widely believed to involve torture and mistreatment.
Nesma Abu Shaʿira taught fine arts and graphic design at al-Aqsa University. She was an artist, a mentor to her students, and was working on illustrations for a children’s book when an Israeli airstrike hit her home in Gaza City, killing her and her daughter.
Rola Abdul Jawad taught engineering and multimedia, while also building a career in graphic design and encouraging other young women in Gaza to do the same. She and her sister were killed in an Israeli bombardment in Gaza City.
They are three among many scholars whose lives and work are documented in the Remembering Gaza Scholars archive.
The Jerusalem Fund invites you to an evening with Judith E. Tucker and Sharif S. Elmusa, two of the authors behind the archive. Their work honors and commemorates the many Palestinian scholars murdered in Gaza during the genocide perpetrated by Israel by documenting their lives, work, and legacies and helping us understand what their loss has meant for intellectual life, institutions of higher education, and families in Palestine.
The conversation will introduce the project and the process of constructing it, while also reflecting on the larger questions it raises: the direct targeting and killing of Palestinian scholars, the destruction of institutions of higher education in Gaza, the role of archives and public memory in preserving lives that must be remembered, and the imperative of accountability for those responsible.
At The Jerusalem Fund, part of our mission is to create a space in Washington where Palestine and America can encounter one another through scholarship, memory, history, and serious public conversation. This evening belongs very naturally to that mission, and we hope you will join us.
Register here: Gaza Scholars Murdered in the Genocide: the website honoring their legacies
Learn more about the project here: Remembering Gaza Scholars archive
