{"id":102493,"date":"2025-07-29T16:25:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T16:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/102493\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T16:25:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T16:25:10","slug":"israeli-public-figures-call-for-crippling-sanctions-on-israel-over-gaza-starvation-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/102493\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli public figures call for \u2018crippling sanctions\u2019 on Israel over Gaza starvation | Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

A group of high-profile Israeli public figures, including academics, artists and public intellectuals, has called for \u201ccrippling sanctions\u201d to be imposed by the international community on Israel, amid mounting horror over its starvation of Gaza<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 31 signatories of a letter to the Guardian<\/a> include an Academy award recipient, Yuval Abraham; a former Israeli attorney general, Michael Ben-Yair; Avraham Burg, a former speaker of Israel\u2019s parliament and former head of the Jewish Agency; and a number of recipients of the prestigious Israel prize, Israel\u2019s highest cultural honour.<\/p>\n

The figures come from the worlds of journalism, poetry, science, journalism and academia, and the letter accuses Israel<\/a> of \u201cstarving the people of Gaza to death and contemplating the forced removal of millions of Palestinians from the strip\u201d.<\/p>\n

It adds: \u201cThe international community must impose crippling sanctions on Israel until it ends this brutal campaign and implements a permanent ceasefire.\u201d<\/p>\n

The letter is significant both for its unvarnished criticism of Israel and for breaking the taboo of endorsing stringent international sanctions, in a country where politicians have promoted laws targeting those advocating such measures.<\/p>\n

Among other signatories are the painter Michal Na\u2019aman; Ra\u2019anan Alexandrowicz, an award-winning documentary filmmaker; Samuel Maoz, the director of the Golden Lion-winning film Lebanon; the poet Aharon Shabtai and the choreographer Inbal Pinto.<\/p>\n

The mounting international horror over the trajectory of Israel\u2019s war in Gaza<\/a> is increasingly being reflected inside Israel itself \u2013 and within the wider global Jewish diaspora \u2013 amid images of emaciated Palestinian children and reports of the shooting by Israeli forces of hungry Palestinians at food distribution centres.<\/p>\n

The letter was published as it was announced that more than 60,000 Palestinians had been killed in the 21-month Israel-Gaza war<\/a>, according to Gaza\u2019s health ministry.<\/p>\n

On Monday two well-known Israeli human rights groups, B\u2019Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, released reports<\/a> assessing for the first time that Israel was conducting a \u201cgenocidal\u201d policy against Palestinians in Gaza, breaking another taboo.<\/p>\n

On Sunday the Reform movement, the largest Jewish denomination in the US, said the Israeli government was \u201cculpable\u201d in Gaza\u2019s spreading famine.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one should be unaffected by the pervasive hunger experienced by thousands of Gazans. No one should spend the bulk of their time arguing technical definitions between starvation and pervasive hunger.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation is dire, and it is deadly. Nor should we accept arguments that because Hamas is the primary reason many Gazans are either starving or on the verge of starving, that the Jewish state is not also culpable in this human disaster. The primary moral response must begin with anguished hearts in the face of such a large-scale human tragedy.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlocking food, water, medicine, and power \u2013 especially for children \u2013 is indefensible,\u201d it said. \u201cLet us not allow our grief to harden into indifference, nor our love for Israel to blind us to the cries of the vulnerable. Let us rise to the moral challenge of this moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latest interventions follow comments earlier this month by the former Israel prime minister Ehud Olmert, who told the Guardian<\/a> that a \u201chumanitarian city\u201d Israel\u2019s defence minister has proposed building on the ruins of Rafah would be a concentration camp, and forcing Palestinians inside would amount to ethnic cleansing.<\/p>\n

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, officials and rightwing NGOs have continued to deny the existence of famine in Gaza caused by Israel.<\/p>\n

That has occurred in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including the UN\u2019s exacting and data-based food security monitor, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification mechanism, and Donald Trump\u2019s acknowledgment of \u201creal starvation\u201d<\/a> in the coastal strip.<\/p>\n

The Israeli government has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of high-profile Israeli public figures, including academics, artists and public intellectuals, has called for \u201ccrippling sanctions\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":102494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[99,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-102493","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-israel","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}