Israel’s National Library Reopens After Delay Caused by Hamas Attacks

Before Oct. 7, Hana Cooper downloaded everything from daily news reports to rabbinic blog posts, saving them for posterity in the Israeli National Library’s archive of the Israeli internet and the broader Jewish online world.

But within days of the Hamas-led attacks, Ms. Cooper began spending her time archiving violent images of the assault, many of them posted by the attackers themselves on digital platforms like Telegram.

“It was surreal,” Ms. Cooper said in an interview. “I was working with the same tools, but in a completely different world. The war became everything that I did.”

Israel’s cultural sector had to reconstitute itself on Oct. 7, as the nation grieved the roughly 1,200 people killed that day and the military called up hundreds of thousands of citizens.