Prominent Jews among thousands to sign letter rejecting genocide charge against Israel

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

Signatories included 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, including the Anti-Defamation League’s director Jonathan Greenblatt and its former leader Abe Foxman, who signed the letter before he died earlier this year.

The letter was a project of the Creative Community for Peace, which opposes antisemitism and anti-Israel boycotts in the entertainment industry.

It came amid ongoing controversy over remarks by actor Mark Ruffalo, a harsh detractor 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 against Israel, in which terrorists killed 1,200 and took 251 hostage.

Israel has repeatedly and vehemently rejected allegations of genocide, saying its actions in Gaza adhere to international law as it battles a terror group deeply embedded within the civilian population.

“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 read.

“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,” it continued. “But we must unite in repudiating the lie of genocide.”

The letter cited 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 stated. “To accuse Israel of genocide, the massacre of October 7 has been systematically downplayed, while Israeli actions have been distorted and amplified.”

As of the writing of the letter, no international courts have found Israel responsible for genocide in Gaza. The United Nations’ International Court of Justice is still reviewing the case brought before it by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide, and proceedings are likely to drag on for years.

A team of independent experts commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council and the largest professional organization of scholars studying genocide has both concluded that Israel is violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, but only an international court can make a legal determination.

Israel has rejected the accusation of genocide as baseless and accused South Africa of acting as an emissary of Hamas.

Agencies contributed to this report