52 Nobel Laureates Call for Israel Arms Boycott
A group of Nobel Peace Prize laureates joined artists and activists in signing an open letter calling for an international military boycott of Israel following this month’s Gaza conflict.
The letter, first reported by the Guardian, criticizes the United States and the European Union, as well as others, for providing support to Israel’s military that enabled the launch of its Operation Pillar of Defense on Gaza. The operation was launched to end escalated rocket fire on Israel from Gaza.
“While the United States has been the largest sponsor of Israel, supplying billions of dollars of advanced military hardware every year, the role of the European Union must not go unnoticed, in particular its hefty subsidies to Israel’s military complex through its research programs,” the letter said. It went on to chastise “the growing military ties between Israel and the emerging economies of Brazil, India and South Korea.”
The 52 signers include Nobel Peace laureates Mairead Maguire, Nelson Mandela and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel; film directors Mike Leigh and Ken Loach; author Alice Walker; U.S. academic Noam Chomsky; and Roger Waters of the rock band Pink Floyd.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
