October 7, 2024
Dear judges of the International Criminal Court,
When we heard in January that the Court on which you sit had decided to hear the case concerning the situation in Israel-Palestine, we were encouraged. Humanity needs an International Criminal Court that upholds the rule of law and is prepared to investigate the most serious allegations of violations of international law.
Today, on 7 October 2024, exactly one year after the start of the latest and most brutal phase of the 76-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we feel the need to address you directly. Not only because of the increasing cruelty of what is happening west of the Jordan River, but also because of the dangerous precedent that would be set if a state could operate so far outside the international consensus of acceptable behaviour in times of conflict. Unless such violations are sanctioned by a court such as yours, states will carry out war crimes with greater impunity in the future.
For it is now beyond dispute: Israel’s Government has set out to eliminate systematically every aspect of Palestinian life in Gaza. We have already seen:
- The most intensive bombing of a densely populated urban area in living memory
- The most deliberate starvation of a population since the Second World War
- The systematic destruction of health facilities
- An unprecedented number of journalists and UN personnel killed
The Israeli government has attacked schools, universities, libraries, archives, cultural centres, heritage sites, mosques and churches. Professors and teachers have been killed, along with their students and often their entire families. Meanwhile, under the cover of the Gaza conflict, Israeli settlers, protected by IDF soldiers, are evicting Palestinians from their ancestral homeland in direct violation of every principle of international law.
These are not merely violations by a government. The international community has no reason to expect that a change of government will bring the Israeli state back into the fold of international law. On 19 July 2024 the International Court of Justice ruled as unlawful Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Five days later, the Israeli Knesset voted 65-9 to ignore the ICJ ruling and provocatively described the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as part of “the Land of Israel”. To prove further its contempt for international law and the institutions humanity created after the Second World War to support it, last Wednesday Israel’s government banned UN Secretary General Guterres from entering the country.
So here is the question: When can we expect indictments from your Court?
Today is the anniversary of the beginning of the bleakest chapter of a tragedy that our generation will be answerable for, to future generations. Today humanity needs more than ever a court like yours, where impartial legal minds from around the world can reach consensus on standards of legal conduct in war and its aftermath. Your role is vital, and we implore you to act immediately.
Thank you,
Brian Eno and Yanis Varoufakis
Join us by endorsing this letter via this link. You can also send the letter to the International Criminal Court. We need them to act as soon as possible. Their address is [Oude Waalsdorperweg 10, 2597 AK Den Haag, Netherlands]
For a pdf copy of this letter, click here.
Context: Why we wrote this letter to the judges of the ICC on the bleak anniversary of October 7
A year ago, a Hamas-led force attacked and scaled the fence imprisoning 2.3 million Palestinians (mostly refugees from the original 1948 Nakba ethnic cleansing drive) in Gaza, the world’s largest open air prison. In response to the murder that day of more than a thousand Israeli civilians and the abduction of scores of them, acts that constitute war crimes, Israel retaliated with a year-long military campaign that amounts to a well-planned, fully-fledged genocide.
A year on, at least 50 thousand Palestinians have been killed on the spot and, indirectly, more than 200 hundred thousand have succumbed to wounds and disease subsequently – not to mention the thousands of maimed children with no surviving parents.
Today, on the anniversary of October 7, no end to the genocide is in sight. Israel is in the grip of a genocidal far right government which loses no opportunity to escalate its murderous campaign into the West Bank, East Jerusalem, South Lebanon and beyond. Worse still, there is clear evidence that the main opposition supports the government’s general direction leading not only the Middle East but Israeli society itself to ruin.
Brian Eno and I believe that the avalanche of war crimes that is building up daily is not just a catastrophic path for Palestinians and Israelis but also a disastrous development for humanity’s self-image, for its soul. After the last world war, under the auspices of the UN, the world’s nations came together to agree to crucial principles of International Law, including Universal Human Rights and appropriate conduct during war.
So, today, on this bleak anniversary, we are appealing to the International Criminal Court to do its duty. To uphold International Law by prosecuting self-evident war crimes in Israel-Palestine, lest genocide becomes normalised across the world.
Yanis Varoufakis
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