5/28/2025–|Last update: 13:51 (Mecca time)
About 300 French writers, in an article published on Tuesday, condemned what they described as the “genocide” of the population in Gaza, including two Nobel Prize for Literature, Annie Erno and Jean -Marie Gustav Laclezio. They called for a “immediate ceasefire.”
In the article published by the French newspaper “Liberation”, they wrote: “Just as it was urgent describing the crimes committed against civilians on October 7, 2023 as war crimes and crimes against humanity, we must today we half what happens as (genocide).” It is the term that holds legal consequences in accordance with the United Nations Convention of 1948.
“We can no longer be satisfied with the word” horror “; today we must call what is happening in Gaza as a collective annihilation.”
They added: “More than ever, we demand sanctions on the State of Israel, and we demand an immediate ceasefire, guaranteeing security and justice for the Palestinians, the release of Israeli hostages, and thousands of Palestinian prisoners arbitrarily detained in Israeli prisons, and puts an immediate end to this genocide.”
It is noteworthy that Annie Erno, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022, in appreciation of her “courage and clinical ingenuity in detecting roots, alienation and collective restrictions of personal memory”, is known for its political positions supporting the freedom of Palestine. Jean -Marie Gustav Laclezio, who won the same prize in 2008, has a long history of defending human rights, and his work is known for focusing on topics such as migration, cultural identity, and interaction between civilizations.
Among the signers of the article were a book that recently won the prestigious Goncourt Prize, such as Irvie Le Teelier, Jerome Ferrari, Laurent Godth, Bergit Jiro, Leila Soleimani, Wady Silver, and the writer of Senegalese Muhammad Mbogar Saar, Nicola Matteo, and Eric Voyar.
And Ervie Le Teelier, born in Paris in 1957, is a writer, linguist and member of the “Olibo” literary collection, and he won the 2020 Goncourt Award for his novel “Lanumali”, which achieved sales exceeding one million copies in France. As for Jerome Ferrari, born in 1968, he is a French writer and translator who won the 2012 Goncourt Prize for his novel “Sermon on the Fall of Rome”. While Laurent Godth, born in 1972, he is a novelist and theater writer won the 2004 Goncourt Award for his novel “Shams Al Skorta”, after receiving the 2002 Goncourt Prize for his novel “The Death of King Tsungur”.
Accusations against Israel of committing a “genocide” in Gaza are increasing by the United Nations, human rights groups, and many countries, but this term, which Israel rejects severely, raises a division between the monitors of this war.
The site of the article stressed that this description is “not a slogan”, refusing “to express unjust public sympathy, without describing what this horror is.”
The signatories pointed out that public statements by Israeli ministers, such as Bastel Smoretic and Etamar Bin Ghaffir, express the intentions of extermination, stressing that the use of the term “genocide” is no longer a debate among international law experts and human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations Human Rights Council.
The statement also stressed that a collective responsibility rests with the intellectuals, calling for a clear position against what they described as “the crime of the times.”
The statement sparked widespread controversy in French cultural and political circles. While many intellectuals and human rights activists welcomed him, others considered it a “biased” or “politicized” position, especially in light of the sensitivity to the use of the term “genocide” and the consequent legal and moral consequences.
On the other hand, more than 380 international writers and artists, including Zadi Smith, Ian Mac Iwan, and the Shafiq, joined a similar statement published in the Guardian newspaper, in which they described what is happening in Gaza as “genocide”, demanding an immediate ceasefire and providing unconditional humanitarian assistance.