Some 300 UK celebrities led by members of the entertainment elites signed an open letter Thursday demanding Britain halt arms sales to Israel.
Their missive, as reported by AFP, called on Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer to “end the UK’s complicity in the horrors in Gaza.”
British-Albanian pop star Dua Lipa has previously been vocal about the war in Gaza and last year criticised Israel’s response to the October 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks as “genocide.”
Now she has company.
Other signatories include actors Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton and Riz Ahmed, and musicians Paloma Faith, Annie Lennox and Massive Attack.
“You can’t call it ‘intolerable’ and keep sending arms,” read the letter to Starmer organised by Choose Love, a UK-based charity.
Sports broadcaster and former soccer player Gary Lineker, who stepped down from his role at the BBC after a social media post that contained graphic anti-Semitic imagery, also signed the letter.
Signatories urged the UK to ensure “full humanitarian access across Gaza”, broker an “immediate and permanent ceasefire”, and “immediately suspend” all arms sales to Israel.
“The children of Gaza cannot wait another minute. Prime Minister, what will you choose? Complicity in war crimes, or the courage to act?”, the letter continued, per the AFP report.
The letter comes after Joaquin Phoenix, Guillermo del Toro, Jim Jarmusch, and dozens more Hollywood celebrities and film industry insiders lent their names to a letter attacking the industry for its “silence” over the Israeli government’s efforts to root out terror organization Hamas in Gaza, as Breitbart News reported.
Their letter accused the Israeli Army of “targeting civilians” and “deliberately killing more than 200 journalists,” not to mention “brutally killing writers, film-makers and artists.”
Hamas murdered 1,218 people, mostly civilians, in their October 2023 attack on Israel, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
The terrorists also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 who the Israeli military says are dead.
AFP contributed to this report
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