The New Dark Age

Emily Karaka (Aotearoa), Parallel Process: Palestinian Horizon, 2024. Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation. Installation view: Ka Awatea, A New Dawn, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah, 2024.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Finally, before history ends, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The indictment stated that there ‘are reasonable grounds to believe that both individuals intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity’. The court found sufficient reasons to believe that the two men ‘bear criminal responsibility’ for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts, and the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population. Almost immediately, US President Joe Biden condemned the court’s actions, stating that the ‘ICC issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous’. The United States, Biden said, ‘will always stand with Israel’.

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