We beat the Trump administration in court. Now we’re going to the ICC to hold the U.S. accountable for the Gaza genocide

Over the course of the last three years, my family has lost 49 family members in Gaza. Their bodies were torn apart by shrapnel, crushed by falling buildings, and mutilated by bullets and munitions made and provided by the United States of America. Now, the U.S. is trying to dismantle the International Criminal Court, the only international court that can criminally prosecute U.S. officials for aiding and enabling genocide, by sanctioning the Court and attempting to intimidate anyone, including U.S. citizens, from working with them. So, in response, I joined others to sue this administration in order to take them to the very court they’re trying to destroy. I’m a Palestinian-American organizer, and I helped establish Taxpayers Alliance Against Genocide (TAAG), which recently partnered with Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) to sue the Trump administration so we can continue much-needed legal and advocacy work. Over the course of over a year, TAAG worked with an international legal team to prepare evidence against top U.S. officials for aiding and enabling the genocide of my people, but up until now, we haven’t been able to submit our evidence to the ICC because of this administration’s attacks and sanctions on the court and its judges. Thankfully, that will now change after we successfully challenged the Trump administration in court. On October 13 we won a preliminary injunction that blocks this administration from being able to target our groups for working with sanctioned parties, clearing the way for us to proceed to the ICC. For the first time since the genocide started, I am beginning to see a glimmer of hope that justice will be found for the dozens of family members I have lost in Gaza. The Trump administration’s war on the ICC Long before the Trump administration sanctioned the entirety of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on October 9, it first enacted Executive Order 14203 in February of 2025. This executive order granted administration officials the ability to sanction foreign nationals for supporting the ICC’s investigations into U.S. and Israeli parties guilty of committing war crimes and their complicity in genocide. Under this Executive Order (EO) , the Trump administration also sanctioned leading Palestinian human rights groups al-Haq, al-Mezan, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), as well as the UN Special Rapporteur for the Human Rights Situation on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese, along with other ICC officials. Photo: Taxpayers Alliance Against Genocide What many people don’t know is that the EO that allowed the administration to sanction these parties doesn’t only go after foreign nationals, it also makes it a federal offense — punishable by a $1 million dollar fine and/or 20 years in prison — for anyone, including American citizens, who provides or receives a “service” to or from a sanctioned party. This provision of the EO is exactly why TAAG and DAWN took this administration to court: Our lawsuit argued that the EO violates our First Amendment rights as American citizens to speak, associate, and engage in Palestine-related human rights advocacy with these parties. As a founding member of TAAG, I can tell you firsthand how these sanctions have prevented us and organizations like DAWN from being able to continue our work sharing evidence and advocacy ideas with people like Albanese and ICC officials, because the definition of “service” is so broad and undefined — the US can interpret it as being anything that confers a benefit to the recipient. In an October 9 video of Marco Rubio announcing the actions against the ICC, he tries defending the administration’s actions by calling the ICC a “rogue court,” which the U.S. is “not subject to the jurisdiction of.” But Rubio leaves out a fundamental principle of international law: A country does not have to join the ICC for its nationals to fall within the Court’s jurisdiction. If a country that is not a State Party to the Rome Statute commits a war crime on the lands of a country that is a state party, the perpetrator of that crime can be investigated. Given that Palestine is a State Party to the Rome Statute, and that Gaza (and the West Bank) are classified as Occupied Palestinian Territories by the United Nations, the ICC has every right to investigate and prosecute the United States and Israel for the insurmountable war crimes committed against my family members and thousands of other innocent civilians. It is clear that the only “protections” this administration are seeking are for the citizens responsible for aiding and abetting war crimes, which after three years, we have plenty of evidence of. Anthony Aguilar, a retired US special forces officer and whistleblower who resigned from his work with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid distribution centers in Gaza, has gone on record saying he saw the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) shooting at crowds of Palestinians, and in an interview with the BBC says he saw Israeli and American military forces of the GHF using an “indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed, starving population.” Rubio consistently mentions the idea of “protecting American citizens” from investigations by the ICC, but the citizens he is referring to are the ones committing the war crimes he doesn’t want investigated. What about American citizens whose families have been killed with U.S.-supplied weapons? Who protects our right to seek justice? In sanctioning the entirety of the ICC, the Trump administration is not only trying to cripple any attempt to hold them accountable for their war crimes, but they’re also telling American citizens like myself that if you dare to seek justice for the family members you’ve lost, we’ll imprison you. The struggle for accountability moves forward Now that the courts sided with us in our lawsuit, we are finally able to prepare for the next steps ahead. With the injunction in place, TAAG is now moving forward to finalize its evidence submission and plans to imminently send this to the ICC. We are also rallying support, within the US and beyond, for human rights organizations and advocates for the ICC to act responsibly upon this massive collection of evidence, in hopes that more parties take appropriate legal actions where possible. We fundamentally believe that grassroots movements like ours, and so many throughout the world, are the ones who must step up where our leadership has failed, and build the democratic, popular power capable of ensuring that legal action against genocide is taken and enforced. We also hope that our actions inspire more American citizens to speak up against this administration and the priorities of our government. I helped found Taxpayers Alliance Against Genocide because I’m sick of our tax dollars being used against my own family in Gaza, while our communities here in the U.S. suffer from a lack of housing, education and healthcare. Those of us within TAAG recognize that we have a duty as American citizens to hold our nation accountable for the war crimes they commit, not just in Gaza but all over the world. We will not rest until we’ve exhausted every avenue to seek justice and accountability for these war crimes. We will continue collecting evidence, and pursuing every available legal avenue, moving forward with our crucial evidence work for a prospective submission to the ICC and advance our efforts to hold U.S. officials accountable for crimes against humanity. We will not be intimidated into abandoning our work, our families, or the principle that no one is above the law.