Documenting War Crimes in Gaza

The primary motivation came from the fact that we could not believe something like

this was happening and actively being covered up by the

media,

and we realized early on that Israel had both the network and

control over mainstream media groups to actually bury it.

So we made it our singular mission to make sure that could not happen,

and to get as many people as possible to see the raw war crimes footage.

Israel's war on Gaza has been described as the first live-streamed genocide,

with footage of war crimes and utter destruction flooding social

media since

October 2023. Now, new technology is taking that

documentation a step further, mapping videos of Israeli war

crimes to the exact sites and locations across Gaza where they

were filmed. Meet Archive Genocide, the team behind the technology,

who has just created their interactive node map on a fully functioning

website, named archivegenocide.com.

The project began back in early 2024 with only around two to four

volunteers.

In the beginning, it was extremely difficult work,

split among very few of

us. A lot of the footage was erased and never recovered because we were

limited by the number on our team. As time went on and we gained more

exposure, more people joined in and we were able to split the load

across a much larger group. This meant that we could monitor

and catch a

wider range of sources. We use Telegram as the primary method

to submit footage, where volunteers can send us what they

find, but

we also download entire journalist profiles as a backup.

Once we had collected a sizable amount of footage, we began submitting to

the ICC, Hind Rajab Foundation, and the South

African legal team for their genocide case at the ICJ.

The platform maps more than 35,400 elements of

documented war crimes as individual points in video or photo

form. Some are pinned to the exact location,

while others are placed more

approximately at the level of block, neighborhood, camp, or

building named in the original caption.

Our verification happens in two stages.

The first comes during the collection phase, where we verify the footage being

submitted to us and the journalists themselves, who they are, if

others in Gaza know them, if their content is legitimate and matches

reports coming out of Gaza. We established which journalists

were uploading the

most footage and focused on them first.

We try to geolocate where each event happens based on the footage or

descriptions, and we look at witness testimony

and footage of the

aftermath to help establish the timeline of events and gather

details of what happened. The second verification happens after the

collecting

phase, when it is time to import to the archive.

We check for duplicated footage, unrelated footage, or any footage

from outside the timeframe of this genocide.

We use standard verification methods, video metadata, multiple

angles, and we look for multiple sources for the

same event too to

corroborate. Our geolocation map mainly draws on place

names in

the original captions, reporting that identifies specific buildings or

streets, and published geolocations by independent

researchers like

Genocide.live and Abu Location on Twitter.

Our map uses pre-war satellite imagery and historical imagery

alongside newer views, because a building visible in the original

footage

may no longer exist today. The node map is a separate project that serves

a complementary purpose on top of the geolocation map.

It connects the footage with related events, places, people,

leads, and sources, so researchers can follow those

connections back to

the original material.

Selecting an event opens it within a network view, showing related footage,

links between events, and leads for further investigation.

The map also has a built-in AI assistant, Iris.

Users can ask for a place, type of attack, date, or person, and

the map filters to show only matching footage.

Iris can also explain what a user is looking at.

Other filters allow users to set a date range, play the footage back

week by week, and isolate specific facilities,

such as hospitals,

schools, and mosques. A separate toggle overlays the UN

Satellite

Centre's survey of roughly 198,000 damaged or

destroyed structures as of October 2025.

We have also developed a tool that monitors journalists' accounts and

notifies us whatever a new upload is made.

This allows us to secure the footage before social media platforms can

detect and delete them, and this has made things easier and more

efficient. It also gave us a good bird's-eye view of

events in

Gaza.

As footage continues to emerge from Gaza, Archive Genocide is working to

ensure it is not lost, erased, or forgotten.

By mapping each piece of evidence to places where events unfolded, the

project aims to preserve a record of the destruction and support

efforts to hold those responsible to account.