![Destroyed and heavily damaged residential areas in Gaza City following Israeli attacks, as seen from Israel's Sderot and Kfar Aza on December 17, 2024. [Mostafa Alkharouf - Anadolu Agency]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/AA-20241217-36510366-36510362-DESTRUCTION_IN_NORTHERN_GAZA_AMID_ONGOING_ISRAELI_ATTACKS.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1)
US-based Jewish writer Avi Steinberg has renounced his Israeli citizenship in protest at the genocide that Israel has been committing against Palestinians in Gaza over the past 15 months. He made the announcement in an article for the Truthout website.
“In its genocidal campaign to erase Palestine’s Indigenous people, the state has weaponised my very existence, my birth and identity — and those of so many others,” wrote Steinberg. He pointed out that Israel operates under “ethnically determined supremacist laws” to bolster a military regime whose “clear colonial goal is the elimination” of Palestine.
“The wall that keeps Palestinians from returning home is constituted as much by identity papers as by concrete slabs. Our job must be to remove those concrete slabs, to rip up the phony papers, and to disrupt the narratives that make these structures of oppression and injustice appear legitimate or, god [sic] forbid, inevitable.”
READ: Nearly 1,100 Palestinian babies killed in Israeli war on Gaza, authorities say
Steinberg called on his Israeli friends to join him in renouncing their citizenship or, at the very least, “take material steps to dismantle the colonial edifice.”
Avi Steinberg was born in occupied Jerusalem to Jewish parents who migrated to Israel under the “Law of Return” and later settled in Boston, USA.
In 1950, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, passed the “Law of Return”, which allowed Jews to settle in Israel and obtain citizenship immediately.
With US support, Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza since 7 October 2023, resulting in around 154,000 Palestinian casualties, most of whom are women and children, with over 11,000 missing. Israeli aggression has caused widespread destruction and starvation.
Israel continues its massacres, disregarding arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court on 21 November against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for allegedly committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinians.
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