Writers including Zadie Smith sign open letter calling for Gaza ceasefire

Writers including Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan and Russell T Davies have put their names to an open letter – signed by 380 authors and organisations – calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

The letter, also signed by Jeanette Winterson, Irvine Welsh, Kate Mosse and Elif Shafak, describes Israel’s military campaign in the territory as “genocidal”.

The writers urge people to join them in “ending our collective silence and inaction in the face of horror”.

Israel says it is working to destroy the Palestinian armed group Hamas and get back hostages the group has taken. It has strongly denied allegations of genocide, claims which are also being examined by the International Court of Justice.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response Hamas’ cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 54,056 people have been killed in Gaza since then, including 3,901 over the past 10 weeks, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Half a million people face starvation in the coming months, according to an assessment by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

Responding to the accusation of genocide made by rights group Amnesty International in December, Israel’s foreign ministry described the group’s 295-page report as “entirely false and based on lies”, while the Israeli military said the claims were “entirely baseless and fail to account for the operational realities” it faces.

The authors’ letter is entitled Writers Demand Immediate Gaza Ceasefire and organised by writers Horatio Clare, Kapka Kassabova and Monique Roffey.

It notes that Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, as well as independent experts appointed by the United Nations human rights council, have, it says, “clearly identified genocide or acts of genocide in Gaza, enacted by the Israel Defence Force and directed by the government of Israel”.

The authors call for the distribution of food and medical aid in Gaza by the UN, and a ceasefire “which guarantees safety and justice for all Palestinians, the release of all Israeli hostages, and the release of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners arbitrarily held in Israeli jails”.

Sanctions should be imposed, the letter argues, if the Israeli government does not take action.

While taking this stand, the authors also used the letter to “assert without reservation our absolute opposition to and loathing of antisemitism, of anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli prejudice”.

The letter continued: “We reject and abhor attacks, hate and violence – in writing, speech and action – against Palestinian, Israeli, and Jewish people in all and any form. We stand in solidarity with the resistance of Palestinian, Jewish, and Israeli people to the genocidal policies of the current Israeli government.”

The authors’ letter begins by quoting the poem A Star Said Yesterday by the Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in 2023.

It goes on to say that Palestinians “are not the abstract victims of an abstract war”.

It continues: “Too often, words have been used to justify the unjustifiable, deny the undeniable, defend the indefensible. Too often, too, the right words – the ones that mattered – have been eradicated, along with those who might have written them.”

The term genocide “is not a slogan”, it states. “It carries legal, political, and moral responsibilities.”

The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted following the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

In their letter, the authors emphasised their “absolute opposition to and loathing of antisemitism, of anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli prejudice”.

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