More than 300 French-speaking writers — including Nobel Prize winners Annie Ernaux and Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio — have signed a forceful op-ed denouncing the ongoing genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli regime in Gaza.

The statement, published Tuesday in the French daily Libération, calls for an immediate ceasefire and international sanctions against Israel.

“Just as it was urgent to classify the crimes committed on October 7, 2023, as war crimes and crimes against humanity,” the writers declared, “it is necessary today to name what is happening in Gaza for what it is: genocide.”

The authors strongly condemned the mass killings, displacement, and starvation inflicted upon the Palestinian population by the Israeli occupation army, and demanded swift global action. Their appeal calls for an unconditional ceasefire that guarantees both justice and security for Palestinians.

The statement also demands the release of thousands of Palestinians languishing in Israeli prisons — many without charge — as well as the release of Israeli hostages, insisting that justice must not be selective nor used as a political weapon.

The open letter includes the signatures of many of France’s most celebrated contemporary authors, including several Goncourt Prize laureates such as Hervé Le Tellier, Jérôme Ferrari, Laurent Gaudé, Brigitte Giraud, Leïla Slimani, Lydie Salvayre, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Nicolas Mathieu, and Éric Vuillard.

This intervention by the French literary world adds to a growing global chorus of artists, intellectuals, and civil society voices condemning Israel’s brutal war on Gaza — a war that has already killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to humanitarian sources.

As the genocide in Gaza nears its 600th day, calls for international accountability and concrete action — including sanctions and legal proceedings — are intensifying, with public figures increasingly breaking the silence and demanding an end to Israeli impunity. (ILKHA)