Genocide in Namibia and Gaza, Murder in Portland
Our latest investigations focus on the unfolding genocide in Gaza, an overlooked colonial massacre in 19th-century Namibia, and a deadly attack on antifascists in Portland, Oregon.
Welcome to a new monthly newsletter from Forensic Architecture, with updates on our latest investigations, publications, and exhibitions.
For the past six months, our attention and much of our investigative work has been dominated by the scenes of unimaginable brutality in Gaza we’ve all been exposed to. Despite having lost colleagues, family and friends, we have continued to work through our mourning, and have adapted how we work, to be responsive to requests for fast-turnaround investigations from civil society, human rights organisations on the ground in Gaza and internationally, and media outlets.
With the Forensic Architecture Investigation Unit at al-Haq, we documented a systematic and widespread pattern of attacks on hospitals and other medical infrastructure throughout the Gaza Strip.
We explained how the Israeli army's large fleet of Caterpillar D9 bulldozers engaged in the systematic close shaving of the top layer of soil across the strip, turning vital agricultural land into desert. Our analysis showed how ecocide is an integral part of genocide.
We found that even so-called humanitarian measures were weaponized by Israel — like issuing confusing and inconsistent evacuation orders that instructed Palestinians to move along roads that were directly targeted, into areas that were bombed and lacked infrastructure, medical facilities, clean water or food.
We conducted a detailed analysis of key visual elements in Israel’s defence against the charge of genocide at the International Court of Justice, and discovered a number of errors and false claims.
This month, as we continue to investigate multiple aspects of the unfolding genocide in Gaza, we also unveiled new research on the Hornkranz massacre, an act of genocidal violence by German colonists in Namibia in the 19th century.
Another new investigation, into the murder of an antifascist ‘corker’ protecting a racial justice march in Portland, Oregon, is on view until May 19 at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), as part of the Policing Justice exhibition, which also features our study of tear gas use against protesters in the city in 2020.
Three previous investigations — into racist violence in Germany, ‘disappearances’ in Colombia, and airstrikes in Syria — are currently being featured in exhibitions at the Württembergische Kunstverein in Stuttgart, Germany, Museo La Tertulia in Cali, Colombia, and Fotostiftung Schweiz in Winterthur, Switzerland.
Recent Investigations
12 April. German Colonial Genocide in Namibia: The Hornkranz Massacre
On 12 April, 1893 in present-day Namibia, German colonial troops carried out a massacre at ||Nâ‡gâs, a settlement of the |Khowesin (Witbooi) Nama the colonists called Hornkranz. Working with descendants of survivors, we reconstructed the nearly erased site.
Though the genocide of the Nama, Ovaherero and other peoples indigenous to what is now modern-day Namibia is widely recognised to have taken place between 1904 and 1908, the Nama people remember this massacre as the true first act in the genocide against them.
As our director, Eyal Weizman, explained in ‘Three Genocides,’ a dispatch from Namibia for the London Review of Books, we were invited by Ovaherero and Nama leaders ‘to collaborate with traditional oral historians to locate and map ancestral villages destroyed during the genocide, along with concentration camps and mass graves, and to help construct evidence files to be presented in support of cases demanding their preservation, along with reparations and land restitution.’
This research is part of a wider project, ‘German Colonial Genocide in Namibia: Infrastructure of Genocide’, conducted with our Berlin-based sister agency, Forensis.
In December, some of this work was presented at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin, in a live performance of culturally inherited, collective testimonies, delivered by traditional leaders and oral historians within a continuously transformed visual and auditory immersive environment—a large projection of evolving architectural and environmental scenes—conceived by Forensic Architecture/Forensis.
Read the new investigation and watch the film.
10 April. Destruction of Medical Infrastructure in Gaza, al-Shifa Hospital
Since 7 October 2023, we have aggregated news reports and social media evidence of Israeli military attacks on medical infrastructure in Gaza. Our analysis suggests that hospitals in Gaza were subjected to a systematic pattern of intimidation and violence by the Israeli military as part of the ongoing invasion.
We worked with physicians from many international organizations to describe the genocide from the unique perspective of hospitals. Medical professionals are expert witnesses to the physical injuries that patients have sustained, direct eyewitnesses to attacks on hospitals, and secondary witnesses to the stories the patients tell on events happening in a large area around the hospital.
We created a web platform to document the impact of repeated Israeli attacks on Gaza’s largest and most advanced hospital, al-Shifa, using modelling, geolocation of social media images, and pattern analysis. The platform, first published in December, has been updated to track the subsequent destruction of the hospital.
Our most recent update was published on social media after Israeli forces withdrew on 1 April and human remains surfaced amongst the ruins of al-Shifa. The bodies of those killed during this invasion have been bulldozed and makeshift burial grounds—including a mass grave—have been desecrated. In Gaza today, even the dead are not safe.
Our partners at Al-Haq have also documented a similar pattern of attacks on Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital.
Watch the update about al-Shifa on Twitter and explore the full investigation.
2 April. German Arms Exports to Israel
A report by FA’s sister organization, Forensis, supported an urgent application against the German government, filed on 5 April 2024 by a group of Berlin-based lawyers on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza, to stop the export of war weapons to Israel. In collaboration with Palestine Speaks Berlin, Fight for Falastin, and other independent researchers, Forensis studied publicly available information on past, current, and potential future export licences and deliveries of weapons and military equipment from Germany to Israel.
Read the full report.
29 March. ‘No Traces of Life’: Israel’s Ecocide in Gaza 2023-2024
Building on Forensic Architecture’s previous investigation into herbicidal warfare and its effects on Palestinian farmers along the eastern perimeter of the occupied Gaza Strip, this investigation marked Land Day in Palestine by examining the systematic targeting of orchards and greenhouses by Israeli forces since October 2023. Our analysis reveals that this destruction is a widespread and deliberate act of ecocide that has exacerbated the ongoing catastrophic famine in Gaza and is part of a wider pattern of deliberately depriving Palestinians of critical resources for survival.
Read the investigation and watch the film.
14 March. Humanitarian Violence in Gaza
In their defence against South Africa’s allegation at the International Court of Justice that it is perpetrating a genocide in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli legal team claimed that rather than seeking to harm civilians it is in fact taking serious measures to protect them. It outlined how, using text messages, websites and leaflets, it warns civilians of impending attacks on their neighbourhoods, and advises them to evacuate by moving along routes it calls ‘safe corridors’ into concentration areas that it calls ‘safe zones.’ But rather than protecting civilians, our study shows the so-called humanitarian measures were weaponized.
Since 7 October 2023, we have tracked the mass displacement of Palestinian civilians being carried out by the Israeli military, and identified three overlapping phases in its execution. Across all three phases, the Israeli military has repeatedly abused the humanitarian measures of evacuation orders, ‘safe routes’, and ‘safe zones’, and failed to comply with the laws governing their application within a wartime context. These patterns of systematic violence and destruction have forced Palestinian civilians from one unsafe area to the next, confirming the conclusion echoed across civilian testimonies, media reports, and assessments by the UN and other humanitarian aid organisations, that ‘there is no safe place in Gaza.’
Read the report, view the web platform and watch Eyal Weizman on Democracy Now.
26 February. An Assessment of Visual Material Presented by The Israeli Legal Team at the ICJ
We analysed the visual material presented by Israel at the International Court of Justice hearing on the request for the indication of provisional measures submitted by South Africa in the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel).
We reviewed the visual evidence presented by Israel — maps, videos, images, and annotated diagrams — and we found eight instances of the Israeli legal team misrepresenting materials presented through incorrect annotations and misleading descriptions.
Our study also revealed that Israel’s lawyers presented single instances of alleged Palestinian military use of civilian infrastructure as blanket justifications for the systematic and widespread attacks on civilians, shelters, schools, and hospitals.
Read the report.
19 February. The Murder of June Knightly
On the evening of 19 February 2022 in Portland, Oregon, a rightwing extremist opened fire on a group of antifascist ‘corkers,’ who were preparing to re-direct traffic around a racial justice march. One of the traffic-safety volunteers, June Knightly, 60, was killed and four of her friends were seriously injured.
When the police arrived on the scene of what a dispatcher called an ‘anti-police protest’, they treated the injured antifascists more like suspects than victims. The following day, even after viewing video of the shooting that made it clear the attack was unprovoked, the police misled the public by claiming, wrongly, that ‘armed protesters’ had confronted an ‘armed homeowner’ before he shot them.
We worked with survivors of the mass shooting to correct that police misinformation, using helmet-camera video recorded by one of the victims to build a digital 3D model of the crime scene, police radio traffic obtained through public records requests, and the testimony of 11 witnesses — including a volunteer armed guard for the protest who stopped the rampage by shooting and disarming the gunman.
Read our investigative reporter Robert Mackey’s Guardian article on the case and a New York Times review of the film.