Breaking the taboo: Israeli figures call for sanctions on Tel Aviv

30th July 2025

3 minutes read

Breaking the taboo: Israeli figures call for sanctions on Tel Aviv

When prominent Israeli figures call for sanctions against their own country, it not only reflects internal protest but also a breakthrough in a political discourse that has long forbidden such demands.

A group of leading Israeli public figures — academics, artists, and intellectuals — have called for “harsh sanctions” by the international community on Israel amid the escalating horrors in Gaza caused by starvation.

Among the 31 signatories of a letter to the British newspaper The Guardian are:

Oscar winner Yuval Abraham.
Former Israeli Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair.
Abraham Burg, former Speaker of the Israeli Knesset.
Former chairman of the Jewish Agency.
Artist Michal Na’aman.
Award-winning documentary filmmaker Renan Alexandrovich.
Director of the Golden Lion-winning film Lebanon, Samuel Maoz.
Poet Aharon Shabtai.
Choreographer Anbal Pinto.
Several recipients of the prestigious Israel Prize, the country’s highest cultural honor.

The letter accuses Israel of “starving the population of Gaza to death and considering forcibly displacing millions of Palestinians from the Strip.”

It adds: “The international community must impose severe sanctions on Israel until it ends this brutal campaign and implements a permanent ceasefire.”

Implications

The letter is significant for its explicit criticism of Israel and breaking the taboo of supporting strict international sanctions in a country where politicians have promoted laws targeting supporters of such measures.

The Guardian noted that “growing international horror at Israel’s war in Gaza is increasingly reflected inside Israel itself — and within the wider global Jewish community — amid images of emaciated Palestinian children and reports of Israeli forces shooting hungry Palestinians at food distribution centers.”

The letter was published as the death toll in Gaza surpassed 60,000 Palestinians since the start of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip on 7 October 2023, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.

Breaking taboos in Israel

On Monday, two well-known Israeli human rights organizations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, released reports for the first time assessing that Tel Aviv pursues a policy of “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza, thus breaking a major taboo.

A day earlier, the Reform Movement, the largest Jewish denomination in the United States, declared that the Israeli government is “responsible” for the famine in Gaza.

In a statement, it said “denying food, water, medicine, and electricity — especially to children — is unjustifiable. Let us not allow our grief to turn into indifference, nor our love for Israel blind us to the cries of the vulnerable. Let us rise to the moral challenge of this moment.”

These recent interventions follow statements by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert earlier this month, who described the “humanitarian city” proposed by the Israeli Defense Minister to be built on the ruins of Rafah as a “concentration camp,” and called forcing Palestinians to enter it “ethnic cleansing.”

Facts undermine the claims

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, officials, and right-wing NGOs continue to deny the existence of famine in Gaza.

This is despite overwhelming evidence proving otherwise, including data from the UN’s detailed food security monitoring system, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, and former U.S. President Donald Trump’s admission of a “real famine” in the coastal enclave.