Brian Eno writes open letter condemning Israel’s actions against Palestine
Electronic music pioneer Brian Eno has shared an open letter to the Judges of the International Criminal Court condemning Israel’s actions against Palestine.
More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in response to the October 7th terrorist attack by Hamas, which cost over 1,100 Israeli lives. Additionally, over two million people have been displaced from their homes with Gaza turned to rubble.
Prior to this, Palestinians had been heavily oppressed by Israeli authorities for decades. This isn’t the first time Eno has spoken out about the conflict. In 2014, he shared a letter on David Byrne’s website asking why America was blindly supporting alleged ethnic cleansing. A couple of years back, he also signed an open letter condemning Israeli raids.
Now, alongside Greek politician Yanis Varoufakis, Eno has penned an open letter asking the International Criminal Court to “act immediately.” Eno and Varoufakis started by addressing the events of October 7th, noting that “a year on the carnage continues,” while there is “no sign of an end.”
“Israel is in the grip of a murderous far-right government which has made its position abundantly clear in public statements,” they wrote, “they want an exclusively Jewish state, and they won’t accept or recognise the UN or any other international body that suggests otherwise.”
Eno and Varoufakis described this as a “catastrophic path for Israel itself and, if unchecked, a disastrous development in international relations.” They wrote that if this is allowed to continue, “we will have sacrificed any right to the moral high ground and given the nod to any other state that wants to behave in a similar fashion.”
The pair then shared a letter directed towards the International Criminal Court asking it to “exercise the mandate it has been given to prosecute war crimes.” The letter described the actions of the Israeli Government to oppress Palestinians, including bombing, the killing of UN representatives, starvation, and attacks upon schools, health centres and more. They suggested that if the court does not act, “states will carry out war crimes with greater impunity in the future.”
“These are not merely violations by a government,” the letter continued, “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.” The letter concluded by imploring the court to “act immediately.”
In the accompanying caption, Eno encouraged people to endorse the letter online and to send it to the International Criminal Court. “Act now or International Law withers forever,” he concluded.
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