Mapping the genocide in Gaza – Mondoweiss The Road to Genocide
Home - Visualizing Palestine A Cartography Of Genocide: Israel's Conduct In Gaza Since October 2023 ← Forensic Architecture 'when It Stopped Being A War': The Situated Testimony Of Dr Ghassan Abu-sittah ← Forensic Architecture Forensic Architecture’s latest report documents the extent and intent of Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip, strengthening South Africa’s case in the ICJ charging Israel with the crime of genocide. In October, Forensic Architecture (FA) released a report meticulously documenting Israel’s military assault on Gaza. A Spatial Analysis of the Israeli Military’s Conduct in Gaza since October 2023 not only reports evidence of the military’s violence against all aspects of civilian life—from hospitals, schools, shelters, archeological sites, and religious centers to agricultural lands, water wells, bakeries, and aid distribution—it also documents how these incidents form patterns that, taken together, demonstrate the intent to commit genocide. According to FA, the report is the result of more than a year of ongoing research into the Israeli military’s conduct in Gaza and was provided to South Africa’s legal team to support their case at the International Court of Justice charging Israel with genocide. Forensic Architecture is based at Goldsmiths, a college of the University of London. Comprised of persons who work in architecture, journalism, filmmaking, law, and computer science, the research collective investigates state crimes. “We’re the people’s forensic agency,” said the founder, Eyal Weizman, in a recent interview with Peter Beinart for the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s Occupied Thoughts podcast. “We only interrogate militaries, secret services, police forces.” Forensic Architecture is also a growing field of study, described on FA’s website as “investigative research… [employing] a suite of methodologies in spatial and architectural analysis, open-source investigation, digital modelling, and witness interviewing using three-dimensional digital models.” One of the most significant reports from FA resulted from its work with Al-Haq’s FA Investigative unit located in Ramallah. Their joint inquiry into the 2022 death of the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh resulted in a step-by-step presentation of a visual, audio, and spatial analysis undeniably demonstrating that her death was a targeted killing. FA’s October report contains more than 800 pages of evidence, organizing thousands of well-documented acts of Israeli military violence into six categories: spatial control; displacement; destruction of agriculture and water resources; destruction of medical infrastructure; destruction of civilian infrastructure; and targeting of aid. These thousands of data points have been visually mapped on FA’s A Cartography of Genocide, revealing what it describes as overlapping “patterns of ‘incidents’.” Key to the report is FA’s argument that these patterns, taken together, can be used to build a case that Israel’s actions and the many statements of its leaders meet the definition of the crime of genocide. “Such patterns may indicate that these attacks are designed, formally or informally, rather than occurring at random or in a haphazard way,” the report says. “We note that military actions are multifaceted, and patterns can exist across actions… [and] may generate an accumulating effect, with every action aggravating the impact of another.” “There [are] a number of legal precedents in which judges accept that patterns reflect [direct] commands,” Weizman said in Beinart’s interview. “So you don’t need to have access into the archive—seeing commands going down, reporting go up—which as a lawyer you really want to have. You need to show patterns. To show patterns you need to map single incidents in space-time and start seeing the relation between them.” One example described in the report is the compounded effects of the military’s destruction of agricultural land and the military’s destruction and/or blockade of outside food aid deliveries. “With food sources inside Gaza destroyed, food could only arrive though Israeli checkpoints, where its distribution was controlled and restricted by the Israeli military,” according to the report. “The destruction of agriculture in Gaza and the targeting of aid aggravated each other and produced food scarcity and famine.” In Beinart’s interview, Weizman said, “What are those relations between a bulldozer crushing a wheat field or a vegetable field in East Gaza, and the soldiers that shoot aid coming in through a checkpoint? Both are an attack on food. One is about food sovereignty and the other is about food coming in from the outside.” The report and its corresponding “Cartography of Genocide” further show how on these large tracts of agricultural land “the Israeli military constructed roads, temporary encampments, permanent bases, lines of fortification, and checkpoints”—which, in turn, aided in the displacement of Palestinians, lessened the space that Palestinians can occupy, and contaminated the soil and underground water resources. “When you add up the scale of crimes against humanity and genocide…,” Weizman said, “it’s all about relations. Genocide is all about relations between statements and actions, between intentions and consequences, between all different types of actions and consequences, what they add up to.” He said, “It’s evidence on a meta-level, meaning it’s evidence about evidence….” Layered over one another—these patterns of repeated displacement of Palestinians, the destruction of agricultural land and medical and civilian infrastructure, and the limiting of aid deliveries—demonstrate the underlying intent behind operational orders. The report concludes, “Our analysis found that these acts of destruction and construction were not haphazard, but followed consistent and clear spatial logic.” At 800 pages, the report is an extraordinary endeavor, the result of a team of investigators who have been working non-stop for more than a year to document Israel’s crimes in Gaza. The volume of evidence—from social media, reporting, and on-the-ground witnesses—was overwhelming at times. In Beinart’s interview, Weizman suggested the cumulative effect that this work can have on the investigators. He said, “You have thousands of evidences flying in to you in a case, and you feel you have to look at them because people took the risk, people took the time, …people tell you things. Even if it’s a video, it’s a record of a moment that somebody has experienced… We take great value in these things. They are the most precious things we are having. When somebody sends you a message, you need to look at it.” Weizman also spoke about the importance of setting Israel’s genocidal acts in a historical context. “You cannot make a genocide case without understanding how intent is formed through the history of the Zionist settler/colonial project.” The patterns that FA has discerned in what it describes as the “space/time” between October 2023 and the present are reflected in historical patterns. As examples, Weizman pointed to the patterns of Israel’s moving Palestinians from the agriculturally rich north to the south in 1948-1949 and how Israel is again moving Palestinians from the north in Gaza to the south, ever closer to the desert, and how the attack on and restriction of aid is a feature of every genocide, as well as a military’s charge that civilian deaths are the “unfortunate” consequence of an embedded enemy. Readers may want to check out two other resources. The UK-based NGO Airwars issued a report last December tracking the pattern and intensity of Israel’s harm to Palestinians during the first 25 days of the war on Gaza. The report, Patterns of Harm Analysis, compares the level of civilian harm in Gaza with military campaigns documented by the organization over its decade of work in other intense and complex conflict zones. Law for Palestine, a non-profit human rights organization, worked with Visualizing Palestine to create the platform, INTENT: The Road to Genocide. Readers may scroll through a visual report of the facts in these areas: civilian harm, starvation, infrastructure, and displacement. Following its conclusions, INTENT documents over 400 statements of genocidal intent by Israeli leaders in the military, the government, and the press.Jeff Wright is an ordained minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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