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Source: https://www.creativecommunityforpeace.com/blog/2026/09/08/rejectlie/
6,000 Leaders across Entertainment, Academia and Public Life Unite to Reject "Genocide" Accusation Against Israel
(Creative Community for Peace) More than 6,000 leaders and public figures from entertainment, academia, literature, government, business, religion and civic life have joined an open letter rejecting the accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and warning that the charge is fueling antisemitism around the world. The authors of the letter include Yossi Klein Halevi, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, Rabbi Micha Odenheimer, and Professor Jonathan Karp. The letter begins: "We the undersigned are outraged and sickened by the latest blood libel to be inflicted on the Jewish people: the lie that Israel committed 'genocide' in Gaza. We reject this accusation with contempt." "The unprecedented combat conditions of the war - hundreds of kilometers of tunnels, thousands of boobytrapped homes - the conflating of combatants with 'journalists' and 'human rights workers,' the ratio of civilian-to-terrorist casualties, considered low for asymmetrical urban warfare, the absence of mass starvation despite repeated claims of imminent catastrophe, the warnings given to civilians before attack: All these factors were erased in the eagerness to indict Israel for genocide....Only one side intended to commit genocide, and that is Hamas." "The massacre of October 7 has been systematically downplayed, while Israeli actions have been distorted and amplified. Israel went to war on October 8 not out of vengeance...but to break the Iranian-led siege of terror enclaves on its borders, and to restore its deterrence, without which it cannot survive in the long term in the Middle East. Thousands of rockets and missiles were fired at Israel in the weeks following the massacre, while Hamas starved and tortured 250 Israelis, some of whom were murdered in captivity." "The bitter irony is that Israel...is the only country to face a sustained war of attempted genocide - from its inception in 1948 until today." Amb. Deborah E. Lipstadt said: "Those who accuse Israel of genocide, a very specific crime with a legally specific definition, are fulfilling the dictum attributed to the Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels. 'If you tell a lie and keep repeating it enough, people will eventually come to believe it.'"