In April 2017 Dean Issacharoff, formerly an officer in the Israeli army, testified to gravely assaulting a Palestinian man in the illegally occupied city of Hebron. At the time of his confession, Issacharoff was a spokesperson for Breaking the Silence, an organisation of Israeli reserve soldiers who speak out about violence they have committed against Palestinians.

The Israeli government tried to use this case to have the group banned. In June 2017, state prosecutors launched an unprecedented investigation into the assault, looking to put Issacharoff on trial. When Breaking the Silence welcomed the prospect of a trial—seeking to make public human rights violations by the Israeli army—the government retreated, closing the case and claiming that the organisation had lied.

Given the ethnic segregation of Hebron, Forensic Architecture was unable to access the site of the violent incident. Instead, FA constructed a precise and navigable digital environment of the site, and asked witnesses to reconstruct their experience in Virtual Reality (VR).

The 3D model allowed for the placement of soldiers and civilians based on activist footage of the event, which was cross-referenced against the virtual testimonies of the witnesses. (Forensic Architecture / Breaking the Silence, 2020)

Walking through this VR model, Issacharoff, as well as two Palestinian witnesses, brothers Jamil and Muhammad Ammar, were able to precisely recall the details of the beating—locating all the participants within the scene they had witnessed. The models produced by each witness were superimposed and cross-referenced with one another, as well as with photographs and videos collected from the day, supporting the veracity of each of the testimonies.

More than proving a single incident, the resulting model records the daily reality of violence and harassment experienced by Palestinians under occupation.