For the 21st-century Israeli, Gaza City is almost an imaginary place. So near and yet so far. But this wasn’t always the case. These rare photos unveil the reality of Gaza’s past
Zvi Meitar (1933-2015) was a collector of historical documents and photographs. During his lifetime he purchased the collections of four important Land of Israel photographers: Beno Rothenberg, Moshe Levin, Boris Carmi and Emanuel Hareuveni. Recently, his family transferred the “Meitar Collection” to the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection in the National Library, where hundreds of photos from Gaza are preserved. The earliest ones, dating to the mid-19th century, originally belonged to the Lenkin Family Collection of Photography, at the University of Pennsylvania.
