Jewish activists have launched a hunger strike at the White House to push for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and actress and politician Cynthia Nixon has joined them.
“The deaths that we have seen are largely due to the bombs, but so many Palestinians now are on the verge of starvation,” Nixon said in an interview with journalist Chuck Modi. “Only seven percent of the nutrition they need is being let in on a daily basis. So we are here hunger striking just to sort of mirror to Biden the kind of deprivation that is happening in Gaza, and how he has it within his power to make a ceasefire happen and to allow humanitarian aid in.”
The hunger strike was organized by organizations including Adalah Justice Project, IfNotNow, Jewish Voice for Peace, Institute for Middle East Understanding, Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee, and Dream Defenders. The organizations are spreading word about the strike on social media with the hashtag #HungerStrikeforCeasefire.
“We’re a coalition of Palestinian, Jewish, and racial justice organizations hunger striking outside the White House to say: permanent ceasefire now,” IfNotNow announced in an Instagram post. “A temporary pause is not enough. The Israeli military is preparing to escalate bombing in Gaza.”
Nixon, who plays Miranda in Sex and the City and And Just Like That…, and ran for governor of New York in 2018, gave a speech in front of the White House when the planned five-day hunger strike began on Monday. “As the mother of Jewish children whose grandparents are Holocaust survivors, I have been asked by my son to use any voice I have to affirm as loudly as possible that ‘never again’ means ‘never again for anyone,'” Nixon said. “I would like to make a personal plea to a president who has himself experienced such devastating personal loss to connect with that empathy for which he is so well known, and to look at the children of Gaza and imagine that they were his children.”
On October 7, Hamas killed almost 1,400 Israelis in the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. In retaliation, Israel launched a weeks-long siege of the Gaza strip, killing over 14,000 people by Gazan officials’ estimates, and displacing an estimated 1.7 million more. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called the situation in Gaza an “epic humanitarian catastrophe,” as refugees are exposed to possible starvation and disease. Many Palestinians and peace activists are calling Israel’s siege a genocide.
Although a temporary ceasefire was put in place from November 24 to November 30, fighting has resumed, and President Biden has requested $14.3 billion in aid for Israel’s war effort. According to a recent study by Axios, Israel is the largest recipient of U.S.-made weapons.
(featured image: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
