Thousands, including prominent Jewish figures, sign letter rejecting genocide charge against Israel

More than 5,000 people, including a collection of prominent Jewish and pro-Israel voices, have signed a letter rejecting the charge that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, according to the group organizing the initiative.

Signatories include former British premier Boris Johnson, former US antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt, media mogul Haim Saban, actress Debra Messing and dozens of other authors, entertainment figures, Jewish organizational leaders and activists.

The letter is a project of the Creative Community for Peace, which opposes antisemitism and anti-Israel boycotts in the entertainment industry. The letter rejecting the genocide charge comes amid ongoing controversy over remarks by actor Mark Ruffalo, a harsh critic of Israel, who recently criticized the Oracle software company’s work with the Israeli military, and the Ellison family’s expanding media interests, and accused Israel of genocide and apartheid.

Those accusations are frequently leveled by Israel’s staunchest critics, who cite the tens of thousands of civilians killed in the Gaza war, launched with Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught in Israel, in which terrorists killed 1,200 and took 251 hostage.

The letter rejects those charges.

“We the undersigned are outraged and sickened by the latest blood libel to be inflicted on the Jewish people: the lie that Israel committed ‘genocide’ in Gaza. We reject this accusation with contempt,” the letter says. “There is a vigorous debate within the Jewish community over aspects of how this war was fought, and that is a sign of moral health. So is our pain over every innocent life lost. But we must unite in repudiating the lie of genocide.”

The letter cites the conditions of the war, fought in an urban environment, as well as Hamas’s fighting from civilian areas, and Israel’s efforts to evacuate civilians before strikes.

“A crucial difference between war as tragedy and war as genocide is intent. In this war, only one side intended to commit genocide, and that is Hamas,” the letter states. “To accuse Israel of genocide, the massacre of October 7 has been systematically downplayed, while Israeli actions have been distorted and amplified.”