Eyal Weizman

Eyal Weizman is one of the world’s leading experts on the relationship between violence, conflict and the environment, both built and natural. As director of the organisation Forensic Architecture, he and his team of interdisciplinary researchers document acts of state crimes and human rights violations around the world. Since 2023, the group has worked to produce evidence for the International Court of Justice’s genocide case against Israel. In Ungrounding, Weizman draws on that research to bring us on an eye-opening journey across time and into the 'deep cartography' of the area extending from Gaza’s subterranean tunnels through to its militarised topography, its unique soil, settlements and barriers. He catalogues, in unflinching and forensic detail, the Israeli campaigns of violence and displacement that have reshaped the region in an effort to make Gaza and its surrounding areas unliveable. Taking us through the broader geographic and historical context, from the Nakba in 1948 to the present day, Ungrounding establishes that architectural and territorial analysis is key to understanding the relationship between coloniser and colonised – and how Israel’s actions after 7 October escalated into violence so extreme and so far-reaching as to, Weizman argues, meet the definition of genocide. Deeply informative and profoundly affecting in its scope and precision, and illustrated with dozens of original images, maps and diagrams, Ungrounding is an essential document of atrocity in our time.

V roce 1985 bylo v Brazílii nalezeno tělo Josefa Mengeleho, jednoho z posledních nacistických zločinců, kteří byli stále na svobodě. Studie autorů Thomase Keenana a Eyala Weizmana popisuje, jak identifikace Mengeleho ostatků otevřela cestu k vyšetřování válečných zločinů, které není založeno na svědectví a paměti, ale na forenzním přístupu. Vědci začínají vystupovat v lidskoprávních trestních případech jako expertní svědci, jejichž úlohou je interpretovat většinou kosti a lidské pozůstatky a mluvit za ně. Publikaci doplňuje český doslov Tomáše Dvořáka a Martina Charváta.