More than 300 of the most prominent writers from the UK and Ireland have called Israel’s actions in Gaza ‘genocide’. In an open letter, the group of writers also called for their governments to push for an immediate ceasefire.
Among the signatories to the letter are the novelists Jeanette Winterson, Kate Mosse, Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan and Irvine Welsh.
Opening the letter, the group said: “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.”
The letter continues by saying: “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 “genocide” or “acts of genocide” to describe what is happening in Gaza is no longer debated by international legal experts or human rights organizations. Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières, 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.”
Later, the letter goes on to explain why the writers refer to what has taken place in Gaza as ‘genocide’. It reads: “The term “genocide” 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.”
Concluding, the group of writers call for sanctions on Israel until the Israeli government agrees to a ceasefire, for unrestricted distribution of food and medical aid in Gaza, and for the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners arbitrarily detained in Israeli jails.
The letter is the latest in a number of interventions from major public figures in the UK. Earlier in the week, more than 800 lawyers called for the UK government to consider initiating proceedings to suspend Israel from the United Nations as a result of its actions in Gaza.
Chris Jarvis
The group of senior lawyers have also called for sanctions to be imposed on Israel
The letter calls for the UK government to use its position as a permanent members of the UN Security Council to consider initiating proceedings in to suspend Israel from the UN.
Opening their letter, the lawyers wrote: “Serious violations of international law are being committed and are further threatened by Israel in the [Occupied Palestinian Territories].”
The letter goes on to say “genocide is being perpetrated in Gaza or, at a minimum, there is a serious risk of genocide occurring” and that “war crimes, crimes against humanity, and serious violations of international humanitarian law are being committed”.
The lawyers also went on to highlight rulings of the International Court of Justice in relation to Israel’s actions, saying: “Israel has been found by the International Court of Justice in July 2024 to be violating peremptory norms of international law across the entire oPt in denying the Palestinian people their right to self-determination and unlawfully annexing territory acquired by force.”
Later in their letter, the lawyers say that the UK government has failed to meet its legal obligations to “take all reasonable steps within their power to prevent and punish genocide”.
According to the Guardian, Alan Moses, a former chair of the bar of England and Wales said of the letter: “We, in the UK, cannot expect peace unless we fulfil our obligations under international law. That is what upholding the rule of law means. It is an exercise in futility for a government to say it upholds the rule of law, if it then does nothing to demonstrate it.”
Among the other calls in the letter is for the UK government to use all available means to “secure an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza”, push for Israel to lift its ban on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and to execute arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court.
In Gaza, starvation is deployed as a weapon – Apsana Begum MP
By Apsana Begum MP
The below speech was delivered at the 17th May 2025 Nakba 77 demonstration in central London, called by Palestine Solidarity Campaign and partner organisations.
For years, I’ve stood with you at protests, condemning Israel’s oppression and crimes against humanity inflicted on the Palestinian people.
Today, I stand here again as we also mark the long years of displacement, mass expulsion and dispossession.
Because I, like you, know we must keep speaking truth to power—even as repression against dissent escalates.
Protest empowers communities to confront injustice, and that is exactly why we’re witnessing brutal crackdowns.
History reminds us of protest’s vital role in driving change, which is why undemocratic forces seek to evade accountability.
But no spin can mask the truth: the UK and U.S. continue to pursue foreign policy with callous indifference to Palestinian lives.
Beyond political theatrics, their hypocrisy is laid bare—censorship, complicity, and UK-made arms slaughtering civilians, 70% of them women and children.
This week, the UN heard of Israel’s forced displacement of Gazans into shrinking enclaves—80% of Gaza now militarized or under evacuation orders.
As I speak, starvation is deployed as a weapon. Aid is blocked to collectively punish civilians. For months, 2.3 million Palestinians have been denied food and medicine.
All the while, Israeli airstrikes rain relentlessly on hospitals, homes, and schools.
Shame on those who have stood by and allowed this to happen. Shame on those who have been complicit.
The actions of the British political establishment have been of tremendous damage to democracy at home, the UK’s reputation abroad and indeed the standing of human rights benchmarks around the world.
There is no doubt that everything that the UK Government has done, everything it continues to do and everything it fails to do, will forever haunt its legacy.
Instead, our movement against war and injustice continues to bring people from all over the world – from all faiths, all ethnicities, all backgrounds.
Demanding aid to support the starving, injured and dispossessed.
Calling for justice and accountability.
Reasserting the unalienable truth that Palestinian people have a right to self-determination.
There can be no “ifs” or “buts” or indeed “eventually” or “sometime in the future”.
No more empty promises.
There needs to be an immediate recognition of a Palestinian state. Now.
I look around me today and see how we are bound by our shared humanity and just purpose:
We will keep speaking out.
We will keep fighting for justice.
We will keep standing for what we know to be right.
Because no one is free until all people are free.
- Apsana Begum is the MP for Poplar and Limehouse and a regular contributor to Labour Outlook. You can follow Apsana on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram and Tik Tok.
- If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.
Left Foot Forward
Zarah Sultana is the primary sponsor of the Early Day Motion
A cross-party group of MPs has issued a call for a ban on arms exports to Israel. 42 MPs have signed an Early Day Motion (EDM) making the call.
The EDM calls for “the Government to immediately suspend all arms exports to Israel in line with majority public opinion”.
It then goes on to say: “Britain has exported over 8,600 munitions, 116 goods in the category of tanks, armoured vehicles and parts thereof and continued direct shipments of F-35 parts after UK’s suspension of licenses in September 2024”, before claiming that this “contradicts ministerial claims to have banned arms sales that could be used in Gaza, including direct supply of F-35 parts to Israel”.
The EDM has been proposed in the context of Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza which has already killed more than 50,000 people.
MPs from Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens, the SNP, the SDLP, Alliance, Plaid Cymru have signed the EDM, alongside a number of independents.
The EDM has been proposed by the independent MP Zarah Sultana.
The full list of signatories is as follows:Zarah Sultana (Independent)
Jeremy Corbyn (Independent)
Andrew George (Liberal Democrat)
Carla Denyer (Green)
Apsana Begum (Independent)
Diane Abbott (Labour)
John McDonnell (Independent)
Richard Burgon (Labour)
Ian Byrne (Labour)
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Labour)
Jon Trickett (Labour)
Brian Leishman (Labour)
Kim Johnson (Labour)
Claire Hanna (SDLP)
Iqbal Mohamed (Independent)
Nadia Whittome (Labour)
Brendan O’Hara (SNP)
Kirsty Blackman (SNP)
Sorcha Eastwood (Alliance)
Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru)
Ian Lavery (Labour)
Sian Berry (Green)
Ayoub Khan (Independent)
Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru)
Llinos Medi (Plaid Cymru)
Ann Davies (Plaid Cymru)
Andrew Gwynne (Independent)
Neil Duncan-Jordan (Labour)
Peter Lamb (Labour)
Ellie Chowns (Green)
Adrian Ramsay (Green)
Imran Hussain (Labour)
Shockat Adam (Independent)
Graham Leadbitter (SNP)
Olivia Blake (Labour)
Seamus Logan (SNP)
Chris Law (SNP)
Cat Smith (Labour)
Dave Doogan (SNP)
Steve Witherden (Labour)
Simon Opher (Labour)
Adnan Hussain (Independent)
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
The utterly intolerable failure to act of Keir Starmer
Tom London condemns the Prime Minister’s performative policy on Israel.
One week ago, Keir Starmer described the situation in Gaza as “utterly intolerable”.He spoke as if he understood the moral imperative to act with the utmost urgency to do everything possible to stop the human catastrophe unfolding in Gaza.
On every day of the week since, around one hundred more Palestinians have died. Every single day. Throughout this genocidal abomination over the last 19 months, over 70% of the dead have been women and children and it is reasonable to assume that would be the case here.
Each of the dead has a name, had dreams, loved and was loved. The Palestinian dead are rarely humanised in the UK media. It is far easier to ignore a statistic.
A member of the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, Tzippy Scott said on live TV last week, “Last night, we killed almost a hundred Gazans… Nobody cares (about it) anymore… Everyone got used to the idea that you can kill 100 Gazans in one night… And nobody in the world cares.” He was revelling in the impunity granted to Israel by the outside world.
In Gaza, where half of the population are children, the threat of death is all-ncompassing. Starving people are living more like animals than humans amongst the ruins or in makeshift tents. Death may come from starvation or dehydration or infectious disease or from lack of medicines and medical care for perfectly treatable conditions.
Or death may come by incineration in a fireball following the dropping of a huge bomb, or by sniper bullets, or by bullets from incessant drones or by tank shells or by missile strikes.
What is happening right now in Gaza is like the bleakest, most terrifying dystopia that has been imagined.
Many survivors are amputees. All of them will surely carry the mental scars for life.
Benjamin Netanyahu no longer bothers to lie about his intentions. He has declared openly, brazenly, that nothing will stop what he calls the war (but which is, in reality, now a genocide, pure and simple).
Netanyahu would not stop the war if the remaining hostages were freed. They would already have been freed if Israel had not unilaterally broken the ceasefire agreement. His aim is a Gaza totally destroyed with none of the original 2.2 million Palestinians living there. They will all have been ethnically cleansed to “somewhere else” – an unspecified place – or they will all have been killed.
A week ago, Starmer issued a joint statement with the leaders of France and Canada. They threatened Israel and promised the Palestinians and people around the world opposing the genocide in Gaza, to “take concrete actions” if Israel did not cease its onslaught on Gaza and lift restrictions on the supply of aid.
Starmer announced two immediate steps to back up the new position – a suspension of trade talks with Israel and the Israeli Ambassador was to be summonsed for a stern dressing down by the Junior Minister – no one explained why it was not the Foreign Secretary as protocol would usually require.
Now it is reported that the UK’s Trade Envoy Lord Austin is in Israel carrying out his job of encouraging trade between the UK and Israel, just as if last week’s announcement had never been made.
Starmer’s words were merely performative. He did not mean what he said but he wanted to be able to say, “Look what I said.”
He has kept on sending arms to Israel and in greater quantities than the previous Conservative Government. His government has strongly defended a case in the High Court to allow them to continue to send Israel vital components for the F-35 fighter jets, which Israel uses to bomb Gazans. He has kept sending Israel regular surveillance reports using RAF planes based in Cyprus.
There has been no let-up whatsoever in Israel’s onslaught on Gaza’s civilians.
It is true that Israel is allowing some more aid into Gaza, but it is a mere drop in the ocean. Almost all the aid that is needed is still being held up at the border by the Israeli Army.
Meanwhile, Israel has set up a new aid project designed to bypass the UN. Twenty-four Western foreign ministers have condemned this new organisation. Its head has since resigned, saying the organisation would not be able to fulfil the principles of “humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence”. It looks as if it is a cynical device intended to be a distraction from the urgent need for aid to be properly distributed by the UN to end starvation while babies, children and adults die every day from starvation.
After his ringing declaration a week ago, what “concrete actions”has Starmer taken or even specifically threatened? None whatsoever.
It is an utterly intolerable failure to act.
Tom London is an activist based in north London.
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