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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="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">mondoweiss.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Mapping the genocide in Gaza</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Jeff Wright</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time">December 28, 2024<br></div>
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<p><font size="1"><a href="https://mondoweiss.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/1943804320-6c9990c5d1566444f4469ad9a05a12eb29dd7a9ae650c61765ae079bc75b90f9-d_1920x1080-1536x864.avif">https://mondoweiss.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/1943804320-6c9990c5d1566444f4469ad9a05a12eb29dd7a9ae650c61765ae079bc75b90f9-d_1920x1080-1536x864.avif</a></font></p><p>
<font size="1">A map showing patterns of Israeli forced displacement in Gaza in October 2023. (Image: Forensic Architecture)
</font></p><p>In October, <a href="https://forensic-architecture.org/">Forensic Architecture</a> (FA) released a report meticulously documenting Israel’s military assault on Gaza. <a href="https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/a-cartography-of-genocide">A Spatial Analysis of the Israeli Military’s Conduct in Gaza since October 2023</a>
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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192">case</a> at the International Court of Justice charging Israel with genocide. </p>
<p>Forensic Architecture is based at <a href="https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Goldsmiths+London">Goldsmiths</a>,
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 <a href="https://fmep.org/resource/the-cartography-of-genocide/">recent interview</a>
with Peter Beinart for the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s Occupied
Thoughts podcast. “We only interrogate militaries, secret services,
police forces.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>One of the most significant reports from FA resulted from its work with <a href="https://www.alhaq.org/">Al-Haq</a>’s
FA Investigative unit located in Ramallah. Their joint inquiry into the
2022 death of the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh resulted in a <a href="https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/shireen-abu-akleh-the-targeted-killing-of-a-journalist">step-by-step presentation</a> of a visual, audio, and spatial analysis undeniably demonstrating that her death was a targeted killing.</p>
<div>
<img width="466" height="466" src="https://mondoweiss.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Destruction-of-Agriculture_01-1024x1024.png" alt="Map showing the cumulative destruction of agricultural land in Gaza between October 2023 and June 2024. (Image: Forensic Architecture)" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">Map
showing the cumulative destruction of agricultural land in Gaza between
October 2023 and June 2024. (Image: Forensic Architecture)</div>
<p>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 href="https://gaza.forensic-architecture.org/database">A Cartography of Genocide</a>, revealing what it describes as overlapping “patterns of ‘incidents’.” </p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf">definition</a><strong> </strong>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.” </p>
<p> “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.”</p>
<p>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.” </p>
<div>
<img width="466" height="466" src="https://mondoweiss.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Destruction-of-Medical-Infrastructure_01-1024x1024.png" alt="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)" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">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)</div>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>The report and its corresponding “<a href="https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/a-cartography-of-genocide">Cartography of Genocide</a>”
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.</p>
<p>“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….”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Readers may want to check out two other resources. The UK-based NGO <a href="https://airwars.org/">Airwars</a>
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, <a href="https://gaza-patterns-harm.airwars.org/">Patterns of Harm Analysis</a>,
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.</p>
<p><a>Law for Palestine</a>, a non-profit human rights organization, worked with <a href="https://visualizingpalestine.org/">Visualizing Palestine</a> to create the platform, <a href="https://roadtogenocide.law4palestine.org/">INTENT: The Road to Genocide</a>.
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.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Jeff Wright</strong><br>Jeff Wright is an ordained minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).</p>
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