Dear John,
From The Hague to Chicago, the events of the past week give us hope.
One week ago, the International Court of Justice ruling found that Israel’s acts in Gaza could plausibly be considered genocide.
A final ruling will take years, but the interim ruling sends a strong signal to the Israeli government - and its backers in the U.S. And the ruling comes with requirements for the Israeli government that are binding under international law.
Meanwhile, a U.S. court found that the U.S. is providing “unflagging support” for a plausible genocide in Gaza.
And just this week, the Chicago City Council became the latest major city to pass a resolution calling for ceasefire, joining San Francisco, Seattle, Detroit, Atlanta, and others. To get a ceasefire resolution started in your city, start here.
The atrocities are not over. The U.S. has withdrawn funding for UNRWA, the main aid agency in Gaza. Rumors are that the Senate will vote next week on a funding bill to include more weapons for Israel (and harmful border spending). The original proposal called for $14 billion in weapons aid to Israel to support its siege of Gaza. All this comes under the cloud of wider war breaking out in the region.
This is why it’s so critical that movements, activists, and lawyers - and you - continue to push back on an international scale, the local scale, and everywhere in between.
In solidarity,
Lindsay and Alliyah
