I did not sign this letter. I was not invited to do so, unsurprisingly. But I would have done so if I had been asked.
Writers Demand Immediate Gaza Ceasefire
We, the undersigned writers of England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, ask our nations and the peoples of the world to join us in ending our collective silence and inaction in the face of horror.
A year and seven months ago, the Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada was killed by Israeli airstrikes. In her poem “A Star Said Yesterday,” she imagined for the people of Gaza a cosmic refuge — something utterly unlike the constant lethal danger they now face:
“And if one day, O Light
All the galaxies
Of the entire universe
Had no more room for us
You would say: “Enter my heart,
There you will finally be safe.”The government of Israel has renewed its assault on Gaza with unrestrained brutality. Public statements by Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir openly express genocidal intentions. The use of the words “genocide” or “acts of genocide” to describe what is happening in Gaza is no longer debated by international legal experts or human rights organizations. Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières, Human Rights Watch, the International Federation for Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and many other specialists and historians have clearly identified genocide or acts of genocide in Gaza, enacted by the Israel Defence Force and directed by the government of Israel.
On behalf of the UN, and published by the office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights, over 40 Special Rapporteurs and independent experts recently concluded: “While States debate terminology — is it or is it not genocide? — Israel continues its relentless destruction of life in Gaza, through attacks by land, air and sea, displacing and massacring the surviving population with impunity,” the experts said. “No one is spared — not the children, persons with disabilities, nursing mothers, journalists, health professionals, aid workers, or hostages. Since breaking the ceasefire, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians, many daily — peaking on 18 March 2025 with 600 casualties in 24 hours, 400 of whom were children.”
Palestinians are not the abstract victims of an abstract war. 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 carries legal, political, and moral responsibilities. Just as it is true to call the atrocities committed by Hamas against innocent civilians on 7 October 2023 crimes of war and crimes against humanity, so today it is true to name the attack on the people of Gaza an atrocity of genocide, with crimes of war and crimes against humanity, committed daily by the Israeli Defence Forces, at the command of the government of the State of Israel.
Recently, Alexis Deswaef, vice-president of International Federation of Human Rights and a lawyer at the International Criminal Court, recalled the concept of the “bystander-approver,” drawn from the special tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. It refers to a senior official who looks on, remains silent, and whose silence is interpreted as a green light by the perpetrators.
We refuse to be a public of bystander-approvers. This is not only about our common humanity and all human rights; this is about our moral fitness as the writers of our time, which diminishes with every day we refuse to speak out and denounce this crime.
In taking this stand, we assert without reservation our absolute opposition to and loathing of antisemitism, of anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli prejudice. 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.
We ask all people to join in our call for compassion, for reason and for mediation. For Hiba, for the nearly 54,000 Gazans killed, and for the survivors — starving, wounded, and scarred for life:
1. We demand the immediate unrestricted distribution of food and medical aid throughout Gaza by the UN.
2. We demand that sanctions be imposed on the State of Israel if the Israeli government does not heed this call, which is also the world's call, for an immediate ceasefire.
3. We demand 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.
This genocide implicates us all. We bear witness to the crimes of genocide, and we refuse to approve them by our silence.
Signed:
Jeanette Winterson
And more than. 300 others.
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Powerful stuff.
“bystander-approver” – I like that – we’ve had plenty of those over here since 2010, and it also is an apt label to apply the Stymied’s Labour Party and their attitude in accommodating the Tory party run down of the state.
Agreed
Publish the following if you think it appropriate.
Medhi Hasan and the Zeteo team conduct important interviews and present much commentary that I respect.
This recording was on 23 May 2025:
Debunked! Don’t Let Them Gaslight You on the Gaza Genocide https
://zeteo.com/p/debunked-dont-let-them-gaslight-you-on-gaza-genocide?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=2325511&post_id=164111832&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=watch_now_button&r=1z86p5&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
I have transcribed it as well as I could
The G word, genocide.
Don’t let them gaslight you on Gaza. Most media outlets in the West, even now, even as Israel continues to proudly flatten Gaza and starve the Palestinians of Gaza, refuse to use the term ‘Genocide’.
Joe Biden last year went out of his way to say what’s happening in Gaza is not ‘Genocide’. Keir Starmer refuses to say it is. And pro-Israel groups often accuse anyone who says ‘Gaza is a genocide’ of perpetrating ‘an anti-Semitic blood libel.’
And yet, here’s the thing they don’t want you to know. ‘Genocide’ experts are almost all in agreement that what’s happening is a ‘Genocide’ per the legal definition under the ‘Genocide Convention’: “Acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national ethnic racial or religious group”.
So here are the names, the expert names, you need to know, including Jewish and Israeli experts on the subject of ‘Genocide’ to avoid being gaslit by apologists for Israel.
First, there are the academic experts who say Gaza is a genocide.
Martin Shaw who literally wrote the book ’What is genocide?’
Melanie O’Brien who is the President of the ‘Association of Genocide Scholars’.
Dirk Moses who is the senior editor of the journal of Genocide Research.
Iva Vukusic who helped prosecute the Srebrenica genocide.
William Schabas who even defended Myanmar against charges of genocide against the Rohinga, but now says what Israel is doing in Gaza now is a genocide.
There are also the Israeli ‘Genocide’ experts, the Israeli ‘historians of the Holocaust’ who say Gaza is a ‘Genocide’:
Professors Omer Bartov, Amos Goldberg, Daniel Blackman, Raz Siegel, Lee Mordecai, Dr Schmuel Lederman – who was originally opposed to calling Gaza a genocide but now says “What Israel is doing in Gaza is genocidal in every sense.”
Then there are the human rights groups who say Gaza is a ‘Genocide’: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the legal clinics of top US universities who say it’s a ‘Genocide; at Boston University School of Law; at Cornell Law School; at Yale Law School.
The United Nations organisations and experts who say ‘It’s a genocide’; the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry; the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices; multiple UN Special Rapporteurs.
In fact, speaking the other week to the Dutch newspaper NRC, the Israeli expert Raz Siegel said, ‘Even now, can I name someone, whose work I respect, who doesn’t consider it genocide?’ His answer: ‘No.’ The Israeli expert Schmuel Letterman says it’s now the consensus view among genocide researchers.
So, apologists for Israel, and lazy and cowardly both sides media outlets, might want to reject the charge of genocide in Gaza. They might want to pretend it’s hyperbole or even anti-Semitic but the experts, the actual experts on ‘genocide’, they know a genocide when they see one – and they see one in Gaza.
Thanks Joe
I shall use this. What i do might not amount to much but I cannot stand by and do nothing.
At least I can say, ‘I was not silent in the face of evil.’
Where do we find the bystander-approvers who enable genocide and have decoupled our collective will to protect children, and women and hospitals and schools and aid distribution depots? They are to be found within our politicians who lack moral fortitude, in our media that fails to represent, within public opinion (despite the millions that have taken o the streets and have offered support) and within our toxic economic systems that have sought profit.
1 year, 7 months, 2 weeks and 2 days. Ongoing.
Thx for that powerful list of names, which will be v useful.
Only one thing surprised me about the artists’ letter quoted in RM’s post.
That was the conditionality of the call for sanctions.
Surely we should be severely sanctioning Israel anyway, because of what they have ALREADY done?
(and sacking our trade envoy, the very small Ian Austin)
Israel’s “get out of jail free” card ran out long ago.
One of the challenges in both Torah and Navi’im (prophets), against an unfaithful Israel was when they committed sins “like other nations”. One example repeated through the Hebrew scriptures, was the practice of child sacrifice, passing children through the fire – as burnt offerings to Moloch. Netanyahu may refer to Palestinians as Amalek to justify his genocide, but he himself serves the insatiable child-devouring Moloch, as his missiles incinerate innocent children.
There are enough burnt children’s bodies in Gaza to make that of more than passing relevance, and no, its not a repetition of an ancient antisemitic blood libel myth, it’s an exploration of Hebrew scripture and its relevance to real events..
Apparently this doesn’t bother 403 Labour MPs enough to make them ACT nor does it stir the icy hearts of the UK Cabinet of complicit genocide-deniers.
Interesting that there are currently 403 MPs with the Labour whip. 403 is an html code meaning “access denied”.
Or, in the case of Labour MPs, “Error code 403: Access to conscience DENIED”.
I endorse the letter
I feel physically sick when Evan Davis on R4 PM programme sounds almost cheerful when he makes his bystander remarks on Gaza . Like as though he is referring to a two=all draw in league one.
Even if BBC were not obviously under instructions to tow the government’s own bystander line , its not clear they would be prepared to lay out in stark detail how a whole population is being starved, bombed massacred into submission – sort of too distasteful, and not easy to ‘balance’ and be ‘impartial’ about. .
Gary Linaker interviewed by Amol Rajan. We could do with more of this from our politicians.
https://www.tiktok.com/@middleeasteye/video/7496429267815779606
Thank you, Andrew.
I used to deal with the BBC when working on regulatory and trade policy. There are many more Farage and even Powell fans there than people imagine. They don’t need direction from Gibb, Davie etc. Some anti-Catholic and anti-Irish bigots, too.
Owen Jones gives more of the Linaker interview.
https://www.google.com/search?q=amol+rajan+interviews+gary+linaker&oq=amol+rajan+interviews+gary+linaker&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQABgNGIAEMgoIAhAAGIAEGKIEMgoIAxAAGKIEGIkFMgoIBBAAGIAEGKIEMgoIBRAAGIAEGKIE0gEKMTYzMDBqMGoxNagCCbACAfEFWmw0Jata3zE&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:03ed37f9,vid:OsbsNhjipCc,st:0
worth 10 minutes of your time
Further to Andrew Broadbent’s comment (@ 8.55am) about the BBC, this interview from a few days ago in which a BBC presenter, having just heard a doctor giving heartbreaking testimony of her sickening experience in Gaza, then speaks across her to insist on stating the Israeli denial of genocide.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d5yFJ1CjZYE
This is an example of what is, at the very least, pro-Israeli bias and is, in my view, complicity by the BBC in the genocide.
Thank you for sharing this. Not many weeks after violence erupted, a letter to Joe Biden was written by Jewish writers and artists in the US, urging him to put pressure on the government of Israel, and it was then circulated as a petition. I hope this letter gets used the same way.
I don’t want to sound a jarring note. Far from it. But the call for sanctions in Point 2 shouldn’t be condional. Genocide has been evident for some time now and the formal position of the UN is such that sanctions should already be in place. Sanctions now. No excuses for delay.
I watched a very interesting zoom tonight about the Balfour Declaration.
https://www.youtube.com/live/HysfuYGdhvo?si=_C64up1j1g3zLE_Y
It’s now on youtube.