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 …“
  • Hamouri was arrested in 2005 for “attempting to assassinate Ovadia Yosef…and for his involvement with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”
• 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
  • Barnard, a member of Forensic Architecture’s Advisory Board, serves as the Deputy Director of the UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign. She previously served as Senior Campaigner on Militarism and Security at War on Want.
  • In April 2022, Barnard wrote an article titled “Boycotting Apartheid Is a Moral Duty.”
  • In July 2018, Barnard supported the Irish “Control of Economic Activity (Occupied territories)” bill, which would make it illegal for Irish citizens and residents to import or sell “settlement goods” or to provide or attempt to provide “settlement services.” According to Barnard, “We welcome the news that the Irish Senate has voted to take concrete steps towards justice and accountability by voting to ban trade in goods pillaged from or produced in illegal settlements…War on Want calls on the UK government to stop rewarding human rights abuse and land grabs and to suspend all trade with Israel until it abides by international law.”
• Daniel Machover
  • Machover,  a member of Forensic Architecture’s Advisory Board, has been involved in numerous attempts to arrest Israeli officials through false allegations of war crimes.
    • Machover was involved in obtaining a warrant from a British court to arrest Tzipi Livni, then Foreign Minister of Israel, when she visited the UK.
    • In 2005, Machover and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) submitted alleged evidence files of “war crimes” to the Anti-Terrorist and War Crimes Unit of the London Metropolitan police regarding former IDF Southern Command Chief Maj. Gen. (res.) Doron Almog.In response, the UK issued an arrest warrant, which was subsequently canceled following his departure of England.
  • In 2016, Machover was a signatory on a statement “Defending the Right to Support BDS for Palestinian Rights.”