top of page

ASSANGE, GAZA, AND THE UGLY REALITY OF WAR CRIMES

Caitlin Johnstone

Feb 21, 2024

Mixed media piece I did while nervously awaiting the resolution of the latest Assange hearing:




Text:


If Gaza taught me anything, it’s taught me what war crimes really look like. War crimes are cruel power abuses where soldiers with bombs and guns prey on babies and moms and grandpas and shop owners. War crimes are not abstract to me anymore.


War crimes are brutal.


War crimes are flesh-from-bones.


War crimes are kids crying in the freezing rain because they can’t find any family.


War crimes are snipers picking off patients through hospital windows. War crimes are moms starving to death very slowly under a grave of rubble because no one can rescue them. War crimes are little girls with blown-out eyes from being run over by a tank while she slept in her bed.


And who showed us all this? Journalists. Journalists documenting war crimes.


If the US succeeds in extraditing Assange today, they will set a precedent that any journalist anywhere in the world can be snatched up and taken to the US and locked away for the rest of their lives just for embarrassing the US with evidence of their war crimes.


So I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been pacing around like a nervous Pervis through this latest extradition hearing. So I thought I’d do another painting of Assange, but this time in the blue press helmet made famous by those other courageous journalists from Palestine.


Free Palestine. Free Assange. Free the world.


bottom of page