[News] Mapping the genocide in Gaza

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/12/mapping-the-genocide-in-gaza/?ml_recipient=142058191007516540&ml_link=142058173265610407&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2024-12-29&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation>
Mapping the genocide in Gaza
Jeff Wright
December 28, 2024
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https://mondoweiss.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/1943804320-6c9990c5d1566444f4469ad9a05a12eb29dd7a9ae650c61765ae079bc75b90f9-d_1920x1080-1536x864.avif

A map showing patterns of Israeli forced displacement in Gaza in October
2023. (Image: Forensic Architecture)

In October, Forensic Architecture <https://forensic-architecture.org/> (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
<https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/a-cartography-of-genocide>
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
<https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192> at the International Court of Justice
charging Israel with genocide.

Forensic Architecture is based at Goldsmiths
<https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Goldsmiths+London>, 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
<https://fmep.org/resource/the-cartography-of-genocide/> 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 <https://www.alhaq.org/>’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
<https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/shireen-abu-akleh-the-targeted-killing-of-a-journalist>
of a visual, audio, and spatial analysis undeniably demonstrating that her
death was a targeted killing.
[image: Map showing the cumulative destruction of agricultural land in Gaza
between October 2023 and June 2024. (Image: Forensic Architecture)]Map
showing the cumulative destruction of agricultural land in Gaza between
October 2023 and June 2024. (Image: Forensic Architecture)

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
<https://gaza.forensic-architecture.org/database>, 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
<https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf>
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.”
[image: Map showing the status of hospitals in Gaza in relation of the
extent to the ground invasion as of that day, February 15, 2024. (Image:
Forensic Architecture)]Map showing the status of hospitals in Gaza in
relation of the extent to the ground invasion as of that day, February 15,
2024. (Image: Forensic Architecture)

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
<https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/a-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
<https://airwars.org/> 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
<https://gaza-patterns-harm.airwars.org/>, 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 <https://visualizingpalestine.org/> to create the platform, INTENT:
The Road to Genocide <https://roadtogenocide.law4palestine.org/>. 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*
Jeff Wright is an ordained minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of
Christ).
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