{"id":82682,"date":"2025-05-28T06:32:30","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T05:32:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=82682"},"modified":"2025-05-28T06:32:30","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T05:32:30","slug":"writers-on-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/05\/28\/writers-on-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"Writers on Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

I did not sign this letter<\/a>. I was not invited to do so, unsurprisingly. But I would have done so if I had been asked.<\/p>\n

\n

Writers Demand Immediate Gaza Ceasefire<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

A year and seven months ago, the Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada was killed by Israeli airstrikes. In her poem \u201cA Star Said Yesterday,\u201d she imagined for the people of Gaza a cosmic refuge \u2014 something utterly unlike the constant lethal danger they now face:<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if one day, O Light
\nAll the galaxies
\nOf the entire universe
\nHad no more room for us
\nYou would say: \u201cEnter my heart,
\nThere you will finally be safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u201cgenocide\u201d or \u201cacts of genocide\u201d to describe what is happening in Gaza is no longer debated by international legal experts or human rights organizations. Amnesty International, M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res, 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.<\/p>\n

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: \u201cWhile States debate terminology \u2014 is it or is it not genocide? \u2014 Israel continues its relentless destruction of life in Gaza, through attacks by land, air and sea, displacing and massacring the surviving population with impunity,\u201d the experts said. \u201cNo one is spared \u2014 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 \u2014 peaking on 18 March 2025 with 600 casualties in 24 hours, 400 of whom were children.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 the ones that mattered \u2014 have been eradicated, along with those who might have written them.<\/p>\n

The term \u201cgenocide\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Recently, Alexis Deswaef, vice-president of International Federation of Human Rights and a lawyer at the International Criminal Court, recalled the concept of the \u201cbystander-approver,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 in writing, speech and action \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 starving, wounded, and scarred for life:<\/p>\n

1. We demand the immediate unrestricted distribution of food and medical aid throughout Gaza by the UN.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s call, for an immediate ceasefire.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

This genocide implicates us all. We bear witness to the crimes of genocide, and we refuse to approve them by our silence.<\/p>\n

Signed:<\/p>\n

Jeanette Winterson<\/p>\n

And more than. 300 others.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[215,14,16,203,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-age-of-aggression","category-corruption","category-ethics","category-fascism","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82683,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82682\/revisions\/82683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}