After the war and genocide in southeastern Bosnia in 1993, two very important forces shaped the society that emerged. One was the denial of war criminals and genocidal actors, who smeared and discredited victims to evade accountability. The second was the uphill battle of the survivors to not only deal with the crimes committed against them but also make sure that the truth didn’t get buried by preserving the memory of the events as they happened.
While investigators and other experts flooded Bosnia in the aftermath to collect evidence for the Yugoslavia Tribunal at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, it was grassroots activists and genocide survivors — like the Mothers of Srebrenica — who made the biggest impact. Their efforts ensured that the evidence was not only collected to be presented in courts, but also preserved for future generations. They saw this as a guard against the actors who still — to this day — spread disinformation and deny the genocide and war crimes that took place.
Malicious disinformation campaigns continue wherever crimes against civilians are committed. In Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere, many grassroots efforts have been formed out of the necessity to collect and preserve evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Now, in Gaza, over a year after Israel’s invasion, Palestinians are in the same uncomfortable position, forced to face the enormous task of accounting for their dead and how they were killed, as well as making sure that the evidence leads to accountability — not to mention sets the record straight amid orchestrated attempts to discredit what has happened.
One of the leading forces behind this effort is the grassroots movement and human rights organization Law for Palestine, which is composed of volunteer experts, scholars and researchers. I spoke to two of its members, legal advocate Kathryn Ravey and Palestinian researcher Layla (not their real name), to learn about the work of archiving evidence of genocidal intent in Gaza. Since the early days of October last year, the Law for Palestine team has been tirelessly compiling a database containing evidence of genocide incitement by Israeli leading figures. To this day, they have logged more than 500 instances, which they continue to update. We discussed their motives for doing this work, the challenges they face and lessons learned along the way.
Tell me about Law for Palestine and the work you do?
Kathryn: We’re a global network of legal professionals. We answer legal questions, organize legal training and conduct legal advocacy for Palestinians, including submitting communications to U.N. entities. We are working as a grassroots movement, and we are network-building across the world.
Layla: We started working on the database on Oct. 8 last year. The purpose of the database is to showcase the intent [of Israel’s violence] versus the actual action. We collected any type of statement or material that contained incitement or intent to harm and genocide within the Israeli media, political scene and society. We aim to compile it into one place that can serve not only as evidence but also serve anyone who wants to research the ongoing acts of violence by the state of Israel in the future.
What results and conclusions have you reached through your research?
Kathryn: The legal categorization of genocide is a very difficult one to prove in international law. It’s a case that no one ever wants to bring in international courts because there’s a very high threshold to meet it.
What makes it difficult is that, in addition to showing the act of genocide has occurred, you have to show that this act was done with the intention to destroy the whole or part of a population. We’ve seen that the actions Israel has committed over the last year have constituted genocide, through starvation, forced displacement, killings, targeting of civilian infrastructure, torture, dehumanization and imprisonment. We’ve attempted to show that these ongoing acts have been inextricably linked to the intent.
We’ve seen from Oct. 7 until today, statements by officials as well as people within Israeli society calling for the destruction of the Palestinian people, which includes calling for the withholding of humanitarian aid, eradication and forced displacement. This discourse has significant implications for international law and — with the case of genocide South Africa has brought to the ICJ — this database is an indispensable tool showcasing that all of these calls are materialized in Israel’s actions and wider policy.
Why choose archiving as a form of activism? And why is it important to the wider Palestinian movement?
Layla: Archiving is important not only for legal but also research purposes. As a Palestinian, I have not seen it done very widely, but archiving is pivotal for the events that happened to be remembered, for holding the people responsible accountable, and for future generations to have an opportunity to learn the key patterns that led to these events. Our archives must be accessible to people, because not only can such information become harder and harder to find but also these actions follow a pattern and are not isolated instances.
Kathryn: We live in times where digital activism is new. Most past genocides have been reported only through text, video and photos that are usually retrieved quite a while after the events have occurred.
This is the first time that a genocide has been live-streamed, tweeted and put on TikTok and Instagram. We’re witnessing genocide in a new way. We have been trying to work with various forms of media and try to capture all of this evidence, especially in the digital era where things can be deleted or removed quickly.
One big challenge has been how to capture and share this elusive information. We have made a significant effort to permalink everything, but a lot of times it’s not possible — or it’s very difficult to maintain a video that’s been deleted. It’s a new form of activism to try to hold people accountable for things that can easily disappear online.
What’s unique about your perspective as a grassroots movement that practices archiving and trying to preserve all this evidence in a non-institutionalized way?
Kathryn: This practice came out of necessity. This was not something that Law for Palestine had done before, but after Oct. 7, all of us in civil society circles — along with the Palestinian colleagues we were speaking with — agreed it was an important thing to do.
A year ago, after Oct. 7, it was just chaos. There were so many things to respond to and people and resources were pulled. A lot of this work came out from the fact that no one else was doing it, and we responded to a role that needed to be filled.
As time went on we figured out and experimented with how to maintain and present the database, find safe ways to do the research, secure digital evidence, deal with ownership, prevent information from getting leaked or traced back to a person and protect our researchers from being doxxed or tracked. We also found ways to preserve evidence that might not meet the legal threshold of genocide but are still important to highlight. It’s been an enormous learning process along the way to figure out what’s useful and impactful as an exclusively grassroots effort.
Layla: It’s important to mention that everything in the database is just public information. Palestinians who live within Israel and Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza are exposed to these statements by Israeli news, zionist activists and members of the Knesset.
We hear these types of statements on national news all the time. We need to start tracking who’s been saying what and logging this information instead of accepting it as the status quo because the people whose statements have been logged in the database were pretty vocal about these things way before Oct. 7. So the idea of archiving and exposing these types of statements and making them public to people who are not exposed to Israeli media is very crucial because of the way that the genocide has escalated.
By November, we have already collected 150 statements, and I’m sure we’ve missed some. It is important to start as early as possible to capture as many of these sentiments and make them available to people who are unfamiliar with the Israeli media landscape.
What difficulties did you encounter along the way?
Kathryn: We had countless difficulties. We had to find the sources and translate them — and then ensure we fact-checked our sources that the statement was valid and that the link to the source could be captured. The same story can appear on multiple links so we have to go through large quantities of material.
We were getting so many statements, more than we could categorize or deal with. By that time the ICC and the ICJ were happening. A lot of people were raising the question of genocide and the question of intent. We had all this evidence but very few resources. Most of us do this voluntarily on top of other commitments. This is a lot of work but thankfully over the last few months, we have been working with Visualizing Palestine, which helped us to organize the database and present it in the best way possible.
There are plenty of sources that we’re still trying to permalink, sources that we had to remove, but it’s hard to capture a societal narrative. That being said, the reception of our work has been amazing. A lot of people have been using our database, and we’ve gotten some of the data back on what people are searching for. The amount of people visiting the database demonstrates that it has been a useful tool for anyone looking to advocate or learn more about the situation.
Layla: There’s a very difficult psychological aspect that comes with compiling copious amounts of material of extremely infuriating content and having to sift through things that are fitting the purpose of the database. For example, watching a two-hour-long right-wing TV show where panelists are calling for the extermination of Palestinians can easily take a toll on someone who spends hours being exposed to such materials.
There are also challenges with translations. Many times it is hard to capture the essence of a sentence that does not have a direct way to be translated in English and people who speak the language can understand the nuances but will have a hard time explaining to English speakers.
Kathryn: In addition to the translations, we also had to provide context because — for a lot of the statements we collected — readers might not know the locations, persons or events they are referring to if they are unfamiliar with Israeli discourses.
I would also like to reiterate that the secondhand trauma through reading all of this is a real thing. Also, when asking about people’s perceptions when shown the database, we quickly realized that many people weren’t ready to be confronted with the gravity of what was being said.
This is an invaluable lesson. After all, you are immediately hit with how much has been said because not everyone is a daily witness to those narratives like the Palestinians are and don’t understand how common they are to mainstream Israeli discourse. When we are talking about genocide most people assume this is coming only from more extremist wings of society, but in reality it’s really widespread and our database accurately captures that. I think a lot of people react quite strongly because they’re sort of being questioned on their own perception of this.
Have you been on the receiving end of smear campaigns due to the content of your work?
Layla: I am not doing this work openly as it could complicate things for me given my citizenship. There was an article in an Israeli website that ran a story about our database and how “a group of Palestinians” are trying to implicate Israel in acts it is not doing. Also, in the Law for Palestine Twitter account you can see a lot of bots and pro-Israel accounts trying to discredit us and calling people who are working on the database “antisemites” and questioning our intentions and identities. Other than that, all I’ve seen is just support. People are finding the database useful which is our main goal.
Kathryn: Luckily we haven’t gone through personal attacks, but Israel has attempted to shut down all and everyone in the Palestinian civil society. There is always anticipation for smear campaigns, but I think what is guarding us from them is the fact that the evidence we provided speaks for itself and comes directly from Israeli sources, which is very difficult to dispute.
What have you learned so far and what kind of wisdom would you like to pass to others who have to do this work where genocide and war crimes are also happening?
Layla: If you were to start this type of project, it is very important to have a supportive team, with everyone on the same page, because this is not a one-person project. It is very time-consuming and mentally tiring.
I would also say: Start as early as possible because these types of situations get bad quickly, and if we had waited until the end of October to start archiving we would have missed a lot of crucial information, and we would be drowning in the sheer amount of material that is out there to cover. If you can start early you’ll be able to capture much more in a way that is more efficient and organized.
Kathryn: Because digital evidence in such cases is an emerging field it means that it’s a great opportunity to reshape the human rights and international law landscape. I think we should encourage creativity as there is a ton of new types of evidence we are going to be able to use in the court of law. For example, there is a group looking specifically at TikToks of Israeli soldiers committing war crimes and posting them on the platform. That would have been unheard of even a few years ago.
It’s all a matter of staying creative and flexible. Oftentimes solidarity movements can get rigid or difficult to organize and that’s how they lose momentum. We never intended to make this what it is today. It was something that we started because it was important, and had no idea where it would go. With Visualizing Palestine we worked on an interactive visualization, which is a creative and artistic way to present this database. We never even knew it would get there, so staying responsive, creative and flexible to the changing tides of international law and human rights is very important.
Anything you’d like to add?
Kathryn: Everything in the database is efficiently categorized. It is still very shocking content to go through. Everything you can imagine is there: starvation, torture, forced displacement and more.
Normally, if you’re presenting a case in front of an international law court, you have to read through hundreds of pages and it’s boring. You never get evidence presented in this way, this is such a unique tool that I hope to see more in future cases.
Layla: Not only is this a great and creative source for legal procedures, but it’s also a great source to educate people who are not familiar with legal settings. Many find it hard to read through long articles and stories, so the interactive database offers people a push to dive into this topic and makes it easier for them to digest.
Most people might not be very comfortable to research and read through large quantities of atrocious stories about families being wiped out or starved. But when seeing these types of things, people still want to find out what is being said, or the context, and understand what the connection is between the statement and the real-life actions.
Our database is a good tool for people to start learning about the situation in Palestine and then draw parallel lines with other causes that are going through similar struggles. I feel like that can help create a more emotionally-invested generation, one that can empathize beyond the news. So it’s a tool that can provide a lot to people from different backgrounds with an insight into our situation, and I hope that people get to utilize this opportunity to its fullest.
To learn more about Visualizing Palestine, making narrative waves to turn the tide of oppression toward justice, click here.
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