This talk synthesizes a series of spatial analyses and counter-maps I produced during the October 7 war to interrogate Israel’s humanitarian „performance“—using the word in both its senses. Israel’s interventions—advance bombardment warnings, „safe“ zones, food corridors, and reconstruction plans—functioned simultaneously as spectacle staged for non-Gazan audiences while accomplishing (rather than constraining) concrete military objectives within Gaza. My ability to produce near real-time counter-mapping of these events as they unfolded (rather than through forensic reconstruction) was enabled by the current unprecedented convergence of high-frequency, high-resolution satellite imagery with pervasive social media documentation; I will invite the Forum to consider together the leverage and vulnerabilities of this convergence.
Yaakov Garb is a Professor of environmental studies, approaching global and middle-eastern issues through STS and political-ecological lenses and community-embedded research