High-profile Israelis call for 'crippling sanctions'

A group of high-profile Israeli public figures, including academics, artists and public intellectuals, has called for "crippling sanctions" to be imposed by the international community on Israel, amid mounting horror over its starvation of Gaza.

- Peter Beaumont

The 31 signatories of a letter to the Guardian include an Academy Award recipient, Yuval Abraham; a former Israeli attorney general, Michael Ben-Yair; Avraham Burg, a former speaker of Israel's parliament and former head of the Jewish Agency; and several recipients of the prestigious Israel prize, Israel's highest cultural honour.

The figures come from the worlds of poetry, science, journalism and academia, and the letter accuses Israel of "starving the people of Gaza to death and contemplating the forced removal of millions of Palestinians from the strip".

It adds: "The international community must impose crippling sanctions on Israel until it ends this brutal campaign and implements a permanent ceasefire." The letter is significant both for its unvarnished criticism of Israel and for breaking the taboo of endorsing stringent international sanctions, in a country where politicians have promoted laws targeting those advocating such measures.