Latest news with #ForensicArchitecture
The Guardian
6 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
Have you looked at images of Gaza on Google Maps? You should
A picture says a thousand words. And the imagery slowly seeping out of Gaza tells a story that many politicians and media figures are still doing their best to ignore or obfuscate. Updated satellite imagery on Google Maps of the devastated region, drone shots of dystopian aid checkpoints, and military maps of so-called 'safe zones' make it increasingly hard to argue that Israel's military 'operation' (to use a sanitizing word the media is incredibly fond of) is about eradicating Hamas. This isn't an operation – it's a cremation: one with the ultimate goal of eradicating not just Palestinian life in Gaza, but Palestinian identity altogether. First, though, I want to stress that there still isn't a lot of imagery coming out of Gaza. This is by design – and something I wish more of my colleagues in the western media were outraged about. Israel has not allowed foreign journalists into the territory since the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023, save for carefully curated tours by the Israeli army. It is systematically slaughtering Palestinian journalists on the ground. And it is placing heavy restrictions on foreign aid workers who are let into Gaza. The Israeli government, meanwhile, is trying to control the narrative with its own visual materials. A picture says a thousand words, but pictures can obviously be manipulated or misrepresented. And there are numerous instances where Israel has been found to have misrepresented imagery. Last year, for example, Forensic Architecture, a research agency that investigates human rights violations, analyzed visual material presented by Israel's defence team in hearings at the international court of justice (ICJ). Forensic Architecture's report states that they found 'eight instances where the Israeli legal team misrepresented the visual evidence they cited, through a combination of incorrect annotations and labelling, and misleading verbal descriptions' – a very long way of saying: 'They lied.' One example of these misleading verbal descriptions: Israel's team presented the ICJ with what they described as 'evidence of a rocket launched from next to Gaza's water desalination facility'. Forensic Architecture noted that 'the highlighted feature is more likely a crater caused by an air drop munition from an Israeli strike'. More recently, a Sky News analysis of video footage taken from one of the many hospitals in Gaza that have been bombed contradicted Israel's claim that it was targeting a Hamas 'command and control centre' underneath a hospital. Israel published a video taken from an aerial surveillance aircraft with a highlighted building marked as 'European Hospital'. Sky News, however, showed that the building was actually a school and the 'command center' appeared to be a drainage ditch. I point all this out because great pains have been taken by US politicians and some people in the media to insist that Israel can always be trusted to tell the truth, while Palestinians are frauds who shouldn't be listened to. Palestinians and pro-Palestinian voices are over-exaggerating the severity of the situation, we keep being told by 'reasonable' centrist voices in the media, who seem keen to ignore the growing consensus by genocide scholars (including Israeli scholars) that this is not a 'conflict', it is a genocide. The US government (both this administration and the Biden-Harris administration) has been instrumental in this atrocity denial. In late October 2025, Joe Biden, who spread lies about Hamas beheading babies, said he had 'no notion if Palestinians are telling the truth' about the number of casualties in Gaza. Ever since then, certain parts of the media have repeatedly tried to suggest that the official death toll in Gaza (which is a severe undercount, if anything) has been inflated by those devious Palestinians. Whenever horrific videos come out of Gaza – one of the latest shows a child filmed trying to escape a fire caused by an Israeli strike on a school housing displaced people – some of Israel's worst apologists will rush to spread misinformation about 'Pallywood'. The dead babies are just dolls! The fire is CGI! Turns out Gaza has a better special effects department than Hollywood! Anything remotely inconvenient to Israel's assertion that they have 'the most moral army in the world' is dismissed as fake news. If you don't trust Palestinians, then perhaps you will trust Google Maps. We still don't have the full picture of what Gaza looks like right now, but updates are slowly coming through and updated satellite imagery of the devastation is being shared widely on social media. Most of the updated imagery is from the weeks and months following 7 October 2023 – still very early in the carnage. Even still, the scale of the devastation makes clear that this is not a targeted 'operation', it is a scorched-earth campaign. Eerily, at least three places in Gaza on Google Maps have also now been marked as 'haunted houses'. It's not clear why this is, but some people have expressed suspicion that Israeli soldiers have changed the name for fun. Some Israeli soldiers have, after all, posted photos of themselves playing with underwear from the homes of women who have been displaced. 'The dehumanization from the top is very much sinking down to the soldiers,' a spokesperson for the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has said in reference to visual evidence of Israeli soldiers acting maliciously. Don't just look at Google Maps – look at the maps that Israel is putting out and the changing 'safe zones'. Last December, a small strip of land in south Gaza was marked on a map as a 'humanitarian zone'. Last month, however, the Guardian reported that 'Israel has quietly stopped designating areas of Gaza as humanitarian zones' after breaking the ceasefire. Nowhere in Gaza can be considered safe now. People have been trapped inside a killing field. Look at the recent shocking drone shots published by Israeli media of the 'aid' checkpoints set up by Israel. Look at the starving caged Palestinians surrounded by people who seem to be American military contractors and Israeli soldiers, waiting to receive 'aid' via a dystopian scheme that has horrified the UN and humanitarians. This is not aid. It is occupation. Look at these pictures. Really look at them. If you still believe that all this is justifiable, that you are not bearing witness to crimes against humanity, then look at yourself. Ask yourself what you have become. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Mapping Israel's military campaign in the occupied West Bank
Israel is applying many of the tactics used in its war on Gaza to seize and control territory across the occupied West Bank during its Operation Iron Wall campaign, a new report says. Israel launched the operation in January. Defending what the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) termed 'by far the longest and most destructive operation in the occupied West Bank since the second intifada in the 2000s', the Israeli military claimed its intention was to preserve its 'freedom of action' within the Palestinian territory as it continued to rip up roads and destroy buildings, infrastructure, and water and electricity lines. The report by the British research group Forensic Architecture suggested Israel has imposed what researchers call a system of 'spatial control', essentially a series of mechanisms that allow it to deploy military units across Palestinian territory at will. The report focused on Israeli action in the refugee camps of Jenin and Far'a in the northern West Bank and Nur Shams and Tulkarem in the northwestern West Bank. Researchers interviewed and analysed witness statements, satellite imagery and hundreds of videos to demonstrate a systematic plan of coordinated Israeli action intended to impose a network of military control in refugee camps across the West Bank similar to that imposed upon Gaza. In the process, existing roads have been widened while homes, private gardens and adjacent properties have been demolished to allow for the rapid deployment of Israeli military vehicles. 'This network of military routes is clearly visible in the Jenin refugee camp and evidence indicates that the same tactic is, at the time of publication, being repeated in the Nur Shams and Tulkarm refugee camps,' the report's authors noted. Israeli ministers have previously stated that they planned to use the same methods in the West Bank that have destroyed the Gaza Strip, leading to more than 54,000 Palestinians killed and the majority of buildings damaged or destroyed. In January, Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel would apply the 'lesson' of 'repeated raids in Gaza' to the Jenin refugee camp. The following month, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has control over much of the administration of the West Bank, boasted that 'Tulkarem and Jenin will look like Jabalia and Shujayea. Nablus and Ramallah will resemble Rafah and Khan Younis,' comparing refugee camps in the West Bank to areas in Gaza that have been devastated by Israeli bombing and ground offensives. 'They will also be turned into uninhabitable ruins, and their residents will be forced to migrate and seek a new life in other countries,' Smotrich said. Hamze Attar, a Luxembourg-based defence analyst, told Al Jazeera these tactics are not new in Palestinian territory, having first been deployed by the British during their mandate over historic Palestine, which preceded Israel's foundation in 1948. 'It's part of the 'counterinsurgency' strategy,' he said. 'Bigger roads [mean] easy access to forces – bigger roads, less congested battle management; bigger roads, less ability for fighters to escape from house to house.' About 75,000 Palestinians live in the Jenin, Nur Shams, Far'a and Tulkarem refugee camps. They were either displaced themselves or descended from those displaced during the Nakba (which means 'catastrophe') when roughly 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes by Zionist forces from 1947 to 1949 as part of the creation of Israel. Now, at least 40,000 of those living in the West Bank refugee camps have been displaced as a result of Operation Iron Wall, according to the United Nations. As in Gaza, many of these people were forced from their homes on orders from the Israeli military, which researchers said have been 'weaponised' against the local population. Once an area had been cleared of its buildings and roads, it becomes a kill zone and the Israeli military is free to reshape and build whatever it likes without interference from residents, the report said. 'Such engineered mass displacement has allowed the Israeli military to reshape these built environments unobstructed,' the report noted, adding that when Palestinian residents did try to return to their homes after Israeli military action, they were often obstructed by the continued presence of troops. Forensic Architecture researchers said Israeli attacks on medical facilities in Gaza have also spilled over into the West Bank. 'Israeli attacks on medical infrastructure in the West Bank have included placing hospitals under siege, obstructing ambulance access to areas with injured civilians, targeting medical personnel, and using at least one medical facility as a detention and interrogation centre,' the report said. During Israel's initial attacks on the Jenin refugee camp on January 21, multiple hospitals were surrounded by the Israeli military, including Jenin Government Hospital, al-Amal Hospital and al-Razi Hospital, researchers noted. The following day, civilians and hospital staff reported that the main road leading to Jenin Government Hospital was destroyed by Israeli military bulldozers and access to the hospital was blocked by newly constructed berms, or land barriers, On February 4, reports from Jenin said the Israeli military was obstructing ambulances carrying injured people from reaching the hospital. Also carrying unmistakable echoes of Gaza was an UNRWA report in early February saying the Israeli military had forcibly co-opted one of the health centres at the UNRWA-run Arroub camp near Jerusalem as an interrogation and detention site. The attacks on healthcare facilities were part of a wider campaign to damage civilian infrastructure in the West Bank, the Forensic Architecture report said, using armoured bulldozers, controlled demolitions and air attacks. Researchers said they verified more than 200 examples of Israeli soldiers deliberately destroying buildings and street networks in all four of the refugee camps with armoured bulldozers reducing civilian roads to barely passable piles of exposed earth and rubble. Civilian property, including parked vehicles, food carts and agricultural buildings, such as greenhouses, were also destroyed during Israeli military operations, they said.
Al Jazeera
27-05-2025
- General
- Al Jazeera
Mapping Israel's military campaign in the occupied West Bank
Israel is applying many of the tactics used in its war on Gaza to seize and control territory across the occupied West Bank during its Operation Iron Wall campaign, a new report says. Israel launched the operation in January. Defending what the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) termed 'by far the longest and most destructive operation in the occupied West Bank since the second intifada in the 2000s', the Israeli military claimed its intention was to preserve its 'freedom of action' within the Palestinian territory as it continued to rip up roads and destroy buildings, infrastructure, and water and electricity lines. The report by the British research group Forensic Architecture suggested Israel has imposed what researchers call a system of 'spatial control', essentially a series of mechanisms that allow it to deploy military units across Palestinian territory at will. The report focused on Israeli action in the refugee camps of Jenin and Far'a in the northern West Bank and Nur Shams and Tulkarem in the northwestern West Bank. Researchers interviewed and analysed witness statements, satellite imagery and hundreds of videos to demonstrate a systematic plan of coordinated Israeli action intended to impose a network of military control in refugee camps across the West Bank similar to that imposed upon Gaza. In the process, existing roads have been widened while homes, private gardens and adjacent properties have been demolished to allow for the rapid deployment of Israeli military vehicles. 'This network of military routes is clearly visible in the Jenin refugee camp and evidence indicates that the same tactic is, at the time of publication, being repeated in the Nur Shams and Tulkarm refugee camps,' the report's authors noted. Israeli ministers have previously stated that they planned to use the same methods in the West Bank that have destroyed the Gaza Strip, leading to more than 54,000 Palestinians killed and the majority of buildings damaged or destroyed. In January, Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel would apply the 'lesson' of 'repeated raids in Gaza' to the Jenin refugee camp. The following month, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has control over much of the administration of the West Bank, boasted that 'Tulkarem and Jenin will look like Jabalia and Shujayea. Nablus and Ramallah will resemble Rafah and Khan Younis,' comparing refugee camps in the West Bank to areas in Gaza that have been devastated by Israeli bombing and ground offensives. 'They will also be turned into uninhabitable ruins, and their residents will be forced to migrate and seek a new life in other countries,' Smotrich said. Hamze Attar, a Luxembourg-based defence analyst, told Al Jazeera these tactics are not new in Palestinian territory, having first been deployed by the British during their mandate over historic Palestine, which preceded Israel's foundation in 1948. 'It's part of the 'counterinsurgency' strategy,' he said. 'Bigger roads [mean] easy access to forces – bigger roads, less congested battle management; bigger roads, less ability for fighters to escape from house to house.'About 75,000 Palestinians live in the Jenin, Nur Shams, Far'a and Tulkarem refugee camps. They were either displaced themselves or descended from those displaced during the Nakba (which means 'catastrophe') when roughly 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes by Zionist forces from 1947 to 1949 as part of the creation of Israel. Now, at least 40,000 of those living in the West Bank refugee camps have been displaced as a result of Operation Iron Wall, according to the United Nations. As in Gaza, many of these people were forced from their homes on orders from the Israeli military, which researchers said have been 'weaponised' against the local population. Once an area had been cleared of its buildings and roads, it becomes a kill zone and the Israeli military is free to reshape and build whatever it likes without interference from residents, the report said. 'Such engineered mass displacement has allowed the Israeli military to reshape these built environments unobstructed,' the report noted, adding that when Palestinian residents did try to return to their homes after Israeli military action, they were often obstructed by the continued presence of Architecture researchers said Israeli attacks on medical facilities in Gaza have also spilled over into the West Bank. 'Israeli attacks on medical infrastructure in the West Bank have included placing hospitals under siege, obstructing ambulance access to areas with injured civilians, targeting medical personnel, and using at least one medical facility as a detention and interrogation centre,' the report said. During Israel's initial attacks on the Jenin refugee camp on January 21, multiple hospitals were surrounded by the Israeli military, including Jenin Government Hospital, al-Amal Hospital and al-Razi Hospital, researchers noted. The following day, civilians and hospital staff reported that the main road leading to Jenin Government Hospital was destroyed by Israeli military bulldozers and access to the hospital was blocked by newly constructed berms, or land barriers, On February 4, reports from Jenin said the Israeli military was obstructing ambulances carrying injured people from reaching the hospital. Also carrying unmistakable echoes of Gaza was an UNRWA report in early February saying the Israeli military had forcibly co-opted one of the health centres at the UNRWA-run Arroub camp near Jerusalem as an interrogation and detention attacks on healthcare facilities were part of a wider campaign to damage civilian infrastructure in the West Bank, the Forensic Architecture report said, using armoured bulldozers, controlled demolitions and air attacks. Researchers said they verified more than 200 examples of Israeli soldiers deliberately destroying buildings and street networks in all four of the refugee camps with armoured bulldozers reducing civilian roads to barely passable piles of exposed earth and rubble. Civilian property, including parked vehicles, food carts and agricultural buildings, such as greenhouses, were also destroyed during Israeli military operations, they said.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Cannes mourns Palestinian journalist killed in Gaza airstrike
By Hanna Rantala and Francesca Halliwell CANNES, France (Reuters) - The Cannes film community mourned Palestinian journalist Fatima Hassouna on Thursday evening, cramming into theatres to watch the documentary about her life in Gaza. She used to say this would pass, recalled director Sepideh Farsi ahead of a showing of "Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk" in the French Riviera resort town. "And it will pass. She is not here but yet she is present, they didn't manage to defeat her," Farsi said, her voice breaking. Hassouna, 25, had been determined to come to the Cannes Film Festival to see the documentary despite the difficulties posed by Israel's blockade, Farsi told Reuters ahead of the screenings. She was "glowing with joy" the day she learned the film had been selected, Farsi added. The next day, Hassouna was killed in an Israeli airstrike on her home. Her death prompted the usually apolitical festival to issue a statement mourning her as one of "the far too many victims of the violence" in the region. "Although a film is a small thing in the face of such a tragedy," its screening as part of the ACID independent film programme would be a way to honour the journalist, said the festival last month. DON'T LOOK AWAY The screenings coincide with "Nakba Day" -- when Palestinians commemorate the loss of their land following the 1948 war at the birth of the state of Israel -- as Israeli military operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank have again displaced hundreds of thousands. The war has destroyed large swathes of Gaza and forced most of the more than 2 million people who live there to move multiple times, clinging on in tents or bombed-out houses and other makeshift shelters. Farsi said she was doing all she could to bring the film and exhibition of Hassouna's photos, which document life in Gaza amid the war, to as many people as possible. "Those who wanted to look away perhaps will now be confronted with her simplicity, her force, and she's gone now, and they know it," said the Tehran-born director. Farsi added that she received a report this week from the London-based Forensic Architecture research group that had found Hassouna had been a target. "It's hard to believe, it's like science fiction," she said. "What many people want, is for this war to stop and for the civilian population not to be targeted like this. Monstrously." The Israeli army said in a statement on Thursday that it had struck a militant in Gaza City overnight on April 16. "Prior to the strike, steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence," it said.
Straits Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
Cannes mourns Palestinian journalist killed in Gaza airstrike
Director Sepideh Farsi poses during an interview with Reuters about her documentary film \"Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk\" which follows 25-year-old Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, who was killed in Gaza along with several family members in an Israeli airstrike in April one day after it was announced that the documentary had been chosen for the festival's ACID program, during the 78th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, May 15, 2025. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe CANNES, France - The Cannes film community mourned Palestinian journalist Fatima Hassouna on Thursday evening, cramming into theatres to watch the documentary about her life in Gaza. She used to say this would pass, recalled director Sepideh Farsi ahead of a showing of "Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk" in the French Riviera resort town. "And it will pass. She is not here but yet she is present, they didn't manage to defeat her," Farsi said, her voice breaking. Hassouna, 25, had been determined to come to the Cannes Film Festival to see the documentary despite the difficulties posed by Israel's blockade, Farsi told Reuters ahead of the screenings. She was "glowing with joy" the day she learned the film had been selected, Farsi added. The next day, Hassouna was killed in an Israeli airstrike on her home. Her death prompted the usually apolitical festival to issue a statement mourning her as one of "the far too many victims of the violence" in the region. "Although a film is a small thing in the face of such a tragedy," its screening as part of the ACID independent film programme would be a way to honour the journalist, said the festival last month. DON'T LOOK AWAY The screenings coincide with "Nakba Day" -- when Palestinians commemorate the loss of their land following the 1948 war at the birth of the state of Israel -- as Israeli military operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank have again displaced hundreds of thousands. The war has destroyed large swathes of Gaza and forced most of the more than 2 million people who live there to move multiple times, clinging on in tents or bombed-out houses and other makeshift shelters. Farsi said she was doing all she could to bring the film and exhibition of Hassouna's photos, which document life in Gaza amid the war, to as many people as possible. "Those who wanted to look away perhaps will now be confronted with her simplicity, her force, and she's gone now, and they know it," said the Tehran-born director. Farsi added that she received a report this week from the London-based Forensic Architecture research group that had found Hassouna had been a target. "It's hard to believe, it's like science fiction," she said. "What many people want, is for this war to stop and for the civilian population not to be targeted like this. Monstrously." The Israeli army said in a statement on Thursday that it had struck a militant in Gaza City overnight on April 16. "Prior to the strike, steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence," it said. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
