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Ungrounding

The Architecture of Genocide

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Ungrounding

By: Eyal Weizman
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

A devastating, meticulous account of the history of Israel’s destruction of Gaza from an acclaimed architect and investigator

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.

'Urgent and essential' DAVID WENGROW
'Extraordinary' ILAN PAPPÉ

© Eyal Weizman 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Architecture Israel & Palestine Middle East Politics & Government War & Crisis World

Critic reviews

Ungrounding by Eyal Weizman proves that decolonisation is not revenge but a condition for justice and, in the end, for the liberation of both Palestinians and Israelis (FRANCESCA ALBANESE)
In the face of overwhelming state violence, forensic architecture is becoming an indispensable tool of international law and human rights, as well as a new approach to history. Ungrounding is a work of profound moral clarity and scientific precision, based on years of tireless collaboration and advocacy. Urgent and essential reading (DAVID WENGROW)
A wake-up call to the world and the international community – a very important book (SHAWAN JABARIN)
Ungrounding leads us between layers of earth and history, soil and infrastructure, elucidating both the long story of Israeli aggression against Gaza and the histories of Palestinian resistance . . . Weizman cuts through obfuscations and horror, and helps us to see something of the truth (ISABELLA HAMMAD)
Eyal Weizman’s work has long manifested a unique combination of moral passion and scientific rigour. It makes him, as Ungrounding shows, a formidable adversary of technically sophisticated regimes of violent dispossession. No further evidence of Israeli genocidal acts and intentions in Gaza would be necessary after this shocking report (PANKAJ MISHRA)
A timely and crucial contribution tracing the trail of the Israeli architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip. The ruthlessness and inhumanity detailed in this extraordinary book, nonetheless, also hold hope for turning the future soil and grounds into spaces of liberation and reconciliation (ILAN PAPPÉ)
Ungrounding powerfully reveals the architecture of the genocide in Gaza within its century-long context. But with a forensic architect’s precision, Weizman excavates, reassembles and ultimately lays the foundations for an architecture of liberation (TAREQ BACONI)
Ungrounding is a brilliant, shocking and urgent book for our times, as well as a precious warning to future generations (YANIS VAROUFAKIS)
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