Forensic Architecture

Profile

Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
Websitehttps://forensic-architecture.org/
Founded2010
In their own words"develop, disseminate, and employ new techniques for evidence gathering and presentation in the service of human rights and environmental investigations and in support of communities exposed to state violence and persecution"

Funding

  • Donors include the European Union, Sigrid Rausing Trust, Open Society Foundation, and the Oak Foundation.
  • According to Forensic Architecture, “Forensic Architecture is supported by academic, human rights, technology, and arts grants. We also receive income from commissioned investigations, and from exhibitions. All income generated through these activities is used to support ongoing research.”
  • In 2016-2022, Forensic Architecture received €1,996,830 from the European Union to “provide novel types of architectural evidence in the context of a number of high profile IHL and HR investigations, in such places as Syria, Israel/Palestine and Amazonia/Brazi.”
  • In 2023, Forensic Architecture received £150,000 from Sigrid Rausing Trust.
  • In 2018-2021, Forensic Architecture received $560,000 from Open Society Foundations
  • A related NGO, known as Forensis, is registered as a non-profit in Germany. Funding information is not transparent.

Activities

  • Forensic Architecture claims to use technology to “investigat[e] human rights violations including violence committed by states, police forces, militaries, and corporations.” Through slick graphic presentations, the NGO creates a facade of credibility (“CSI Effect”) to mask analyses that are consistently misleading, blatantly biased and based on unverifiable “evidence,” including from sources such as Al Haq (see below).
  • Forensic Architecture consistently utilizes highly biased and politicized language, accusing Israel of “apartheid,” genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” “collective punishment,” and “war crimes.”
  • In December 2023, a lecture at RWTH Aachen University by Forensic Architecture’s branch based in Germany, Forensis, was canceled. According to Forensic Architecture and Forensis head Eyal Weizman, the reason given was that the NGO is an “antisemitic organisation for our human rights work in Palestine.”
  • In December 2023, on the 75th anniversary of the Genocide Convention, Forensic Architecture tweeted, “It is not without grim irony that on this anniversary, a genocide characterised by horrific human, environmental, urban, cultural and social destruction is playing out across Gaza in real time, alongside the targeting of other Palestinians around the country.”
  • In October and November 2023, Forensic Architecture, together with PFLP-linked NGO Al-Haq, sought to debunk investigations – including by the New York Times and various intelligence agencies – showing that an Islamic Jihad rocket caused the explosion near the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. The NGOs accused Israel of “disinformation” and claimed that “Israel has yet to provide any conclusive evidence to support the claim that the source of the deadly blast at al-Ahli hospital was a PIJ or Hamas rocket.” Forensic Architecture and Al-Haq simply ignored the videos, images, and intelligence materials demonstrating that an Islamic Jihad rocket had “misfired” (i.e. detonated in Gaza instead of Israel) and hit the hospital parking lot.
  • In 2022, Forensic Architecture and Al-Haq (designated as a terror linked NGO by Israel, based on ties to the PFLP) launched the “Forensic Architecture Investigation Unit” to “monitor[] and document[] violations against Palestinians for the purposes of legal accountability and public advocacy.”
  • In September 2022, Forensic Architecture condemned the Israeli designation of six Palestinian NGOs, including Al-Haq, as terrorist organizations. According to Forensic Architecture, “@alhaq_org and other Palestinian orgs are facing a range of physical and digital attacks aimed at preventing them from documenting Israeli apartheid. Working with FAI Unit at @alhaq_org, we resist these attempts by exposing the violence committed.”
  • In May 2022, Forensic Architecture supported a submission from Addameer field researcher and lawyer Salah Hamouri urging the ICC to “prioritize this investigation, with adequate resources and meaningful victim participation, with a view to moving towards the issuance of arrest warrants against those who bear the greatest responsibility for the long-running war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against Palestinian civilians …“
  • In February 2021, Forensic Architecture, together with Al-Haq, alleged that Israeli forces acted unlawfully in shooting Ahmed Erekat when he rammed his car into a soldier at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Jerusalem in June 2020. The NGOs did not offer new or concrete evidence, and did not know and could not incorporate the assessments of the Israeli forces on the ground. (Read NGO Monitor’s report “EU-Funded, ICC-Linked Al-Haq and Forensic Architecture on the Ahmad Erekat Shooting.”)
  • In December 2020, Forensic Architecture signed a letter calling on the German Bundestag to revoke its joint resolution defining BDS campaigns against Israel as antisemitic.
  • In July 2018, Forensic Architecture participated in a conference with Zochrot discussing the “indigenous presence of the Palestinian Bedouins as permanent residents of this land along with tracing the cycles of depopulation and destruction carried out by the Israeli government.”
  • In September 2015, Forensic Architecture was “invited by the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court to deliver a closed presentation of its findings on the 2014 war in Gaza.”
  • In July 2015, alongside Amnesty International, Forensic Architecture launched an online “Gaza Platform,” to “map[] Israeli attacks in Gaza” during the 2014 Gaza conflict. The Platform repeats the baseless and distorted accusations of Al Mezan and Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), does not employ credible research methodology, and reflects Forensic Architecture’s and Amnesty’s lack of military and legal expertise.

Staff

  • Eyal Weizman
    • Weizman, director of Forensic Architecture, is formerly a board member of B’Tselem.
    • In February 2020, Eyal Weizman was denied entry into the United States after being classified as a “security threat” by Homeland Security.
    • Weizman has referred to himself as a “supporter of the BDS movement.”
    • Weizman spoke at a November 2023 demonstration in Berlin against the Gaza War, claiming that “we are living in a time of genocide…a genocide against the Palestinian people that we’ve seen escalated in recent weeks. A genocide that has began in 1948.”
    • In November 2022, Weizman accused Israel of “spatial apartheid.”
    • In December 2021, Weizman claimed in an interview that “The domination of Palestinians, in Israel and the occupied territories, is some kind of a lab in which new technologies and new weapons are being designed and exported worldwide…Palestinians in the occupied territories are surveilled as they’re moving between their home, the workplace and that has provided an enormous laboratory for Israel to develop these technologies that are…later marketed and tested in action and become products on a global market.”
    • In January 2021, Weizman was a signatory on a letter to the UK Secretary of State for Education calling to “reject the IHRA document,” referring to the definition as “inherently flawed.”
      • The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, adopted by nearly 30 countries and counting, represents the international consensus definition of antisemitism, as well as how to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. An example of the latter includes denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
    • In July 2017, Weizman coined the term “vertical apartheid,” alleging that Israel’s “evolving vertical system of domination has in the past 15 years hardened into a geographically unique structure.”
    • In September 2014, Weizman falsely claimed in an interview with The Guardian that the tiled red roofs common to Jewish homes in the West Bank are actually “mandatory red roofs so that on flyovers the Israeli army know not to target them.” Following complaints, The Guardian amended the original article to remove this assertion.
    • In January 2009, Weizman signed a petition calling for the UN Security Council and the EU to impose sanctions on Israel.
  • Ryvka Barnard
  • Daniel Machover

Partners

  • According to its website, Forensic Architecture “are part of the Technology Advisory Board of the International Criminal Court (ICC).”
  • Forensic Architecture has partnered with Breaking the Silence.
    • Breaking the Silence makes sweeping accusations based on anecdotal, anonymous, and unverifiable accounts of often low-ranked soldiers. These “testimonies” lack context, are politically biased, and erase the complicated reality in the West Bank. In addition, they reflect a distorted interpretation of the conflict in order to advance the political agenda of Breaking the Silence activists, thereby fueling the international campaigns against Israel.

All Articles about Forensic Architecture

Further Reading