Bethlehem/international community radio platform Radio Alhara has set up live outside the International Court of Justice in the Hague, where South Africa is making a case accusing Israel of committing genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza, and lawyers will respond on behalf of Israel’s government.
I think it’s worth commenting that this is how they’ve chosen to represent the event. There are plenty of times when we respond to events around us with musical expression, with events; there are times we aestheticize those sounds. But there are also times to listen. For many of us, participating in music is a way of valuing being alive with other people – valuing their bodies and well-being. I cannot state strongly enough: to everyone who reads this site, to everyone you care about, we must respect the ability to live, across all our interconnected and mixed-together communities.
You can hear the demonstration happening outside the courts between the echoes of the broadcast from inside the court. (At the moment, I’m hearing a mix of evidently native German in there.) But for many in the international music scene, these sounds of demos and events larger than any of us have dominated our sonic landscape – to whatever extent we can and cannot respond musically.
What you get is a kind of field recording of the event, interior and exterior, a reflection of the dual realities of the UN and international community and the citizens from the music community who are generally neither policymakers nor lawyers.
Radio Alhara homepage / livestream
German broadcaster Deutsche Welle is funded by federal taxes in this country, so as CDM (via Create Digital Media GmbH) revenues pay those taxes, I’ll embed their broadcast. The proceedings are in English. This was the opening of the proceedings; they’re now on recess.