Approximately 300 French writers, including two Nobel Prize laureates, Annie Ernaux and Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, condemned the “genocide” of the population in Gaza in an article published yesterday. They called for an “immediate ceasefire.”
In the piece featured in the French newspaper Libération, they stated: “Just as it was urgent to label the crimes committed against civilians on October 7, 2023, as war crimes and crimes against humanity, we must now describe what is happening as genocide.”
They added: “More than ever, we demand sanctions against the State of Israel, an immediate ceasefire that ensures safety and justice for Palestinians, the release of Israeli hostages, and thousands of Palestinian detainees held arbitrarily in Israeli prisons, and an immediate end to this genocide.”
Among the signatories are writers who recently received the prestigious Prix Goncourt literary award, such as Hervé Le Tellier, Jérôme Ferrari, Laurent Gaudé, Brigitte Giraud, Leïla Slimani, Lydie Salvayre, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Nicolas Mathieu, and Éric Vuillard.
Accusations against Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza are increasing from the United Nations, human rights groups, and several countries. However, this term has been firmly rejected by Israel and is causing division among observers of this conflict.
The authors of the article emphasized that this description “is not a slogan,” rejecting the notion of expressing vague sympathy without accurately defining the nature of this horror.