As we've seen over the past couple of weeks, Amnesty International is at the forefront of a coordinated political warfare against the state of Israel by numerous NGOs who want to see Israel investigated and brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged “war crimes”.
Amnesty’s current campaign started almost as soon as Israel responded to the massive rocket and missile attacks from Gaza with air strikes and ground invasion, accusing Israel of “war crimes” in Gaza during and a short while after last year’s war in Gaza and even calling for UN and international investigation against Israel for violations of international humanitarian law and promoting arms embargo on Israel .
Amnesty teamed up with Forensic Architecture to create what I called the “ bash Israel app ”, recycling provably wrong information by the biased Gaza based Al Mezan and Palestinian Center for Human Rights .
To put it simply, the “Gaza Platform” was created to make up for the lack of credibility on the part of the Arab political NGOs and for the lack of evidence to support the “war crimes” allegations.
That is also the case with the “Forensic” team; there is nothing such as fact-finding methodologies or technical tests in their scope of work, it is just a bombastic name and the end product is just an online data visualization app fed with unreliable data sources.
And that brings us to the Forensic Architecture team members:
Eyal Weizman is the project’s Principal Investigator.
Weizman is a former board member of B’Tselem. His anti-Israel agenda is well documented in a 2013 IsraCampus op-ed and in Goldsmiths College - Eyal Weizman Attacks Israel with 'Forensic Architecture' .
Weizman also signed a petition during Operation Cast Lead (2009), “ calling for the UN Security Council and the EU to impose sanctions on Israel ”. He is a signatory for “ Jews for Justice for Palestinians ” and for a Pro-Hamas Petition in the Jew-hating Counterpunch Magazine as well:
We the undersigned watch with horror yet another ruthless and criminal Israeli assault on the defenceless [Sic] people of the Gaza Strip. The assassination of the Hamas’ military commander, Ahmad al-Jabari, by Israel was intended to disrupt any chance for a permanent cease fire between the two sides and caused the current cycle of violence. For the last five years al-Jabari had been responsible for limiting rocket attacks on Israel..
And just in case anyone has doubt about his bias, Weizmann supports the BDS movement as well; Weizman is one of 65 academics, cultural and political figures backing the RIBA’s stance on the motion calling for the suspension of Israeli architects from the International Architects Union (UIA) .
Other examples of his anti-Israel political agenda can be found by his speaking at conferences ":
"Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine" and "The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories."
Francesco Sebregondi is the Project Coordinator.
His tweets and re-tweets from organizations such as "Free Gaza Movement", " Al-Haq", “Breaking the Silence”, "Electronic Intifada", "Palestine Solidarity Campaign", "Yesh Din", and "Palestine Legal" demonstrate his heavy bias against Israel. Some examples of the lies that he disseminates on Twitter and the animosity towards Israel that he stirs up include:
Palestine Shrinking Expanding Israel | new interactive visualisation https://t.co/A3y8S1gSqD
— Francesco Sebregondi (@FSBRG) May 15, 2015
Jacob Burns is the Research and Campaign Assistant at @Amnestyonline.
His Twitter profile is at https://twitter.com/JacobTBurns, an Instagram one is at https://instagram.com/jacobtburns. He “supports the Palestinian struggle for justice” as evident from a piece he published on anti-Israel Website Mondoweiss .
Jacob, just like his colleague, tweets and re-tweets the “Palestinian” narrative. Apparently, when it comes to Israel, fact-checking and giving audience to the Israeli side is not needed,
His bias against Israel is manifested in some of the photos he uploaded to Instagram, the captions are telling. To him, Palestinians have houses, Jews have colonies:
Because they are "colonists":
Jerusalem, of course, is not in Israel but in "Palestine" according to this "researcher":
And Jews asking for equal rights are a "source of tension" for this human rights advocate:
Apparently, this “great” researcher never heard of the Cave of the Patriarchs or maybe he believes that Jews have no connection to Hebron and have no right to pray there?
Impartial he is not and he seems to be suffering from an ICC for Israel obsession too. On 4 May 2015, he tweeted tens if not over a hundred “Breaking the Silence” “testimonies”.
I found this tweet of his unintentionally ironic and typical of Burns' bias:
Prompt & transparent investigation needed into killing of #Jenin man. IDF says he was throwing bomb, but initial reports often wrong in past
— Jacob Burns (@JacobTBurns) June 10, 2015
The entire Gaza Platform that he is working on is based on initial reports from biased sources that in many cases have been proven wrong!
These are the people who were behind Amnesty's Gaza Platform. They have an agenda, and it has nothing to do with objectivity.
I had thought that Forensic Architecture wrote the code for this tool. They didn't - it was written by a group called Tekja Data Visualization. So Amnesty didn't choose Forensics Architecture for its coding skills - they chose Forensic Architecture for their ability to come up with new, innovative ways to demonize Israel.