Tilda Swinton, Steve Coogan, Maxine Peake & Charles Dance Sign UK Arts & Culture World Petition Calling For End Of Israel’s Gaza Siege & Bombing

Melanie Goodfellow
·3 min read
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More than 2,000 figures from the UK’s arts and culture world have signed an open letter calling for the immediate cessation of Israel’s blockade and bombing of Gaza.

“We are witnessing a crime and a catastrophe. Israel has reduced much of Gaza to rubble, and cut off the supply of water, power, food and medicine to 2.3 million Palestinians,” reads the letter. “In the words of the UN’s undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, ‘the spectre of death’ is hanging over the territory.”

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The signatories include acting stars Tilda Swinton, Charles Dance, Steve Coogan, Miriam Margolyes, Peter Mullan, Maxine Peake and Khalid Abdalla.

The Israeli action is in retaliation for a brutal terror attack out of Gaza by Hamas on October 7, which killed more than 1,400 people and resulted in the taking of 199 hostages.

More than 2,750 Palestinians are reported to have died in Israel’s subsequent bombing campaign, while electricity, food and water supplies are running short due to the blockade.

The petition joins growing calls for Israel to halt its Gaza blockade and bombing campaign and falls on the eve of U.S. President Joe Biden’s Solidarity trip to Israel on Wednesday, as its troops mass on the Israeli border with Gaza ahead of an expected land assault.

Citing Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant’s description of Palestinians as “human animals”, the letter suggests that they “have become people to whom almost anything can be done”.

Further signatories include directors Michael Winterbottom, Mike Leigh and Asif Kapadia, comedians Frankie Boyle and Josie Long, authors Marina Warner, Jacqueline Rose, Gillian Slovo and Courttia Newland, playwrights Tanika Gupta and Abbie Spallen, poet Anthony Anaxagorou as well as visual artists Tai Shani and Oreet Ashery, Larissa Sansour, Rosalind Nashashibi, P. Staff, Florence Peake and Georgina Starr.

Humanitarian organizations have started moving supplies to Egypt’s Sinai region just back from Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with the country, but without a ceasefire or an agreement for the creation of humanitarian corridor its delivery into the strip is impossible.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday that Israel and U.S. had agreed to develop a plan to enable aid from donor nations and multilateral organizations to reach civilians in Gaza but no details have been forthcoming as yet.

The letter in full:

“We are witnessing a crime and a catastrophe. Israel has reduced much of Gaza to rubble, and cut off the supply of water, power, food and medicine to 2.3 million Palestinians. In the words of the UN’s undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, ‘the spectre of death’ is hanging over the territory.

Gaza is already a society of refugees and the children of refugees. Now, in their hundreds of thousands, bombarded from air, sea and land, Palestinians whose grandparents were forced out of their homes at the barrel of a gun are again being told to flee – or face collective punishment on an unimaginable scale.  Dispossessed of rights, described by Israel’s minister of defence as “human animals”, they have become people to whom almost anything can be done.

Our governments are not only tolerating war crimes but aiding and abetting them. There will come a time when they are held to account for their complicity. But for now, while condemning every act of violence against civilians and every infringement of international law whoever perpetrates them, our obligation is to do all we can to bring an end to the unprecedented cruelty being inflicted on Gaza.

We support the global movement against the destruction of Gaza and the mass displacement of the Palestinian people. We demand that our governments end their military and political support for Israel’s actions.

We call for an immediate ceasefire and the opening of Gaza’s crossings to allow humanitarian aid to enter unhindered.”

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