Why I renounced my Israeli citizenship

Last month I filed to renounce my Israeli citizenship at my local Consulate. I was born in Israel, but left when I was a child; I live in the US and have American and British citizenship. While I'm still technically a citizen till they finish processing it, I am committed to this decision, and want to share my reasoning with others, and to encourage other Israeli citizens to consider taking the same step.

Below is the letter I provided alongside my application to renounce my Israeli citizenship.

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I was born in Israel, grew up in Great Britain, and now live in the USA, and am a citizen of all three countries. I am ethnically Jewish and atheist.

I am renouncing my Israeli citizenship, for two primary reasons: (1) as a protest against the genocide and other atrocities being committed by the state of Israel; and (2) because the privilege that I have as a Jew and an Israeli citizen to live freely on that land is inextricably linked to these atrocities. I am forfeiting that privilege, and I refuse to have a genocide committed in my name. I demand an immediate ceasefire and for all aid to be allowed into Gaza immediately and safely, and I demand that all leaders commit genuinely to lasting peace. It’s not too late.

This letter is for the Israeli government, and is also an appeal to Israelis and Jews in the diaspora, to face the truth of what has been done and is being done by Israel and to take action to end this. It is based on my fundamental belief that all human beings have an equal right to life, safety, food and water, prosperity and freedom.

It’s impossible to have a full picture of all of the current events, history, viewpoints, factors and complexities, let alone capture it in a few pages. I am not an expert, but I have followed this conflict for 20 years and take care to assess the credibility of the information I see.

It is crucial to name what is happening now. Some facts are difficult to verify, but this is all based on multiple credible sources. At the time of writing (late August 2025):

• At least 63,000 people in Gaza have been killed, with thousands more still buried under the rubble. The rest of Gaza is starving, much of it now in famine, with hundreds having starved to death and widespread acute malnutrition. Most Gazans who are still alive have had their homes destroyed and have been forced to relocate multiple times, and are living in constant fear. Many have life-long injuries such as lost limbs, and the psychological trauma from all of this is unimaginable. 

• Thousands of people in Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen have also been killed in Israeli strikes.

• 1,200 Israelis were killed on October 7^th. Many more were injured, some were raped, and the trauma of those who survived is also unimaginable.

• Around 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank in the same time period.

• Around 10,000 Palestinians are being held in Israeli detention, a third of them without charge. Many have faced torture or sexual abuse.

• 250 Israeli hostages were taken into Gaza on October 7^th. Many faced torture or sexual abuse. 20 are believed to be still alive.

I don’t have the words to do justice to the amount of suffering and horror that is behind all these numbers.

I am not going to try and weigh in on who is and is not innocent. No one deserves to die. None of this death, suffering and destruction is acceptable. But all of it was preventable, and I believe that Israel bears most of the responsibility. It has done the vast majority of the killing, the bombing, the shooting. Long before October 7^th, Israel has had most of the power, most of the weapons, and has oppressed Palestinians in countless ways. The Nakba, the blockade of Gaza, the continued theft of land in the West Bank, the checkpoints, the refusal to allow any progress toward a Palestinian state. It is no surprise that some Palestinians have responded to this with violence.

This does not abdicate Hamas from their responsibility. I condemn the atrocities of October 7^th. Like Israel, Hamas was oppressing and killing Palestinians for many years before this, and like Israel’s leaders they are more than willing for Jews and Palestinians to die to achieve their goals and cling on to power. If it was Hamas who had all the military might and international support, perhaps their actions would be worse than Israel’s.

I also recognize that many on both sides feel that violence is necessary for the survival of their people. After the Holocaust, many Jews believe that they can only be safe if they have their own state. Many see Hamas as an existential threat, and believe that destroying Hamas is necessary for their own survival. I suspect that many Palestinians see Hamas’s actions as resistance against an occupying force that has oppressed them for decades, and believe that violence is the only option they have left after diplomatic solutions have failed again and again.

There are many other governments that have helped to prolong this war out of their own self-interest, in particular the USA, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Many more are complicit. As an American and British citizen, I will try to hold my representatives to account for the part they are playing in this. But this letter is directed to the state of Israel, to Israelis and to Jews, for what we are responsible for.

Israel is committing genocide. This is the conclusion of many genocide experts and scholars, as well as NGOs and human rights groups including B’Tselem. A recent article by Omer Bartov, an Israel-American professor of Holocaust and genocide studies, in the New York Times lays out the case for this clearly. What makes it clear to me is the systematic way that Israel is not only killing tens of thousands of Gazans and trying to starve those that are left, but is also destroying the land so comprehensively that it is completely uninhabitable - blowing up not only homes but, in Bartov’s words, “government buildings, hospitals, universities, schools, mosques, cultural heritage sites, water treatment plants, agriculture areas, and parks”. Israel has systematically targeted doctors and medical facilities. It’s clear that Israel is simply trying to get rid of Gazans, forcing them to either leave or die.

The mass starvation of the entire population of Gaza is an appalling escalation of this. It is clear that Israel is intentionally starving Gaza, blocking most aid for months and undermining efforts to provide basic necessities for people who have already suffered through 20 months of bombing, invasion and displacement. The physical, psychological and social devastation of this will stay with the survivors for the rest of their lives. The minimal food that Israel does allow in is used as bait to lure those with enough energy to distribution sites where every day dozens of unarmed civilians - 2,000 so far - are shot to death as they desperately try to get food for their families. Many countries have committed despicable acts of violence, but few have reached this level of cruelty.

The approach in the West Bank uses mostly different methods – stealing land, demolishing villages and orchards, forcing Palestinians into smaller and smaller spaces and making their lives harder and harder – but I believe it is towards the same ends.

The genocidal intent of statements by many Israeli leaders is well-documented, and I am horrified by the dehumanization of Palestinians not just by politicians but by many Jews in and out of Israel. It can be clearly quantified in the IDF guidance on how many civilians it’s acceptable to kill for each Hamas militant killed (reportedly 20 early in the war) or the number of Palestinian prisoners exchanged for each Israeli hostage (30 in the exchange in January 2025).

It is clear that Israel’s leaders are deliberately prolonging this war, that they have no interest in peace or plans for what comes next. It is widely understood that Netanyahu is sabotaging any attempt at peace to avoid going to jail for corruption, but it’s also clear that no one in the government has a vision for peace; the only plans they discuss are creating concentration camps in Gaza, forcing Palestinians to leave, re-settling Gaza and completely annexing the West Bank.

Taken as a whole, all of this signals the intent and actions of genocide. Even if it didn’t meet the threshold for that term, that would not make Israel’s actions any less appalling and barbaric.

If we continue on the current path, more and more Palestinians will be erased, along with their culture and history. They will continue to suffer, to be murdered in their tens of thousands, and starved and displaced in their millions, with no say in their future. We will have eternal war in the Middle East, with more bombings and killings by states, militant groups and individuals. Hamas might be destroyed but what replaces them could be even worse, as the horrific violence and trauma that Israel has inflicted upon Palestinians will fuel a level of hatred and desperation we haven’t yet seen. Israelis will continue to be killed, their children will continue to be conscripted and ordered to risk their lives while killing Arabs across the region. More fronts will open, more cities will be bombed, more refugees will cross borders leading to yet more war. Climate change will exacerbate conflicts as resources become more scarce. Across the world, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia will intensify, with more deadly attacks on Arabs and Jews. Jews will still be much safer outside of Israel than inside it. But the ripple of violence will continue to spread out from the Middle East. It’s obvious that this is the future that we are heading towards.

To those who only care about the welfare of Jews, or who care more about Jews than Palestinians: You must understand that all of this is going to make the lives of Jews everywhere much, much worse. We have normalized the mass murder and mass starvation of a whole group based on their ethnicity - even while the whole world watches it unfold, it is still allowed to happen. What will that mean, the next time Jews are the targets of a genocide?

It doesn’t have to be this way. There are paths to peace, safety, freedom and some measure of justice. One path is a 2 state solution. I believe that it’s possible for Jews and Palestinians to live together on this land, but it will require, among many other steps:

• An immediate and permanent ceasefire and the return of all hostages and prisoners

• An immediate end to the blockade of Gaza, allowing all aid and aid organizations into the strip, along with the medical resources needed to treat everyone in Gaza

• The complete withdrawal by Israel from the West Bank and a return to the 1967 borders

• Sufficient funds provided by Israel, the USA and others in the region to rebuild Gaza 

• Prosecution of all those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in international courts

• A truth and reconciliation process and sufficient funds for long-term peace-building initiatives

If these are done sufficiently and in good faith, I will support the process. Given how many billions of dollars have been spent on this war, there is clearly enough money available. It requires genuine commitment from everyone involved. However, Israel clearly has absolutely no interest in this.

The only just alternative is for Israel to cease to exist as a nation. To be clear, this is not saying that any Israeli, or any Jew, should not exist. Perhaps some Jews will be willing and welcome to live in a multi-ethnic Palestinian state, as they did before 1948; I imagine that most would leave. I don’t take this notion lightly. The idea of having to leave the country you have lived in your whole life, building a new life in a new place where you may have no connections, where you may not speak the language, is not something that anyone should be forced to go through. This is something that many Jews have had to go through in the past. It’s also what Israel forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to do in 1948, and is trying to force millions more to do now. And it is better than starving to death.

Ultimately, if Israelis and Palestinians can’t live together in peace, it becomes a question of who gets to stay. This is an extremely difficult question to answer, but as Israel calls for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, it is one that must be confronted. I believe that Palestinians have more of a right to stay, for both moral and pragmatic reasons.

In terms of moral reasons: Firstly, Palestinians had lived in this land for thousands of years when Jews started settling there and eventually took over most of the whole country. Israel was ultimately built on a foundation of colonization, land theft and ethnic cleansing, and that has continued and intensified particularly in the last 30 years. I understand that many Jews feel the need for a homeland for their safety and security, but I also think that building a country explicitly for one ethnic group, on a land where many other ethnic groups already live, will inevitably lead to an unequal society that oppresses some groups. Many experts have described Israel as an apartheid state. Lastly, I do not believe that Jews have a claim to this land just because they lived there 2000 years ago. I do not believe in God. I do not believe that Jews are the “chosen people”, or that we are special in some kind of way. I respect people’s right to practice their religion, but I do not accept religion as a justification for violence or theft. And I understand the religious importance of the land to Jews - as well as to Christians, Muslims and Druze - but that does not give Jews the right to claim it for themselves.

Pragmatically, I think that Jews can live much safer and more prosperous lives outside of Israel than they will in Israel. Jews are already thriving in Western countries, and given how vocal many Western governments have been about their commitment to the safety of Jews, I assume that they would welcome refugees from Israel and support them to settle in new countries. I’m not saying any of this would be easy, or that there wouldn’t continue to be anti-Semitism, but it is far, far better than the current situation. If Jews really believe that they need their own land in order to be safe, I imagine they could find a piece of land somewhere in the world that’s as big as Israel and is actually uninhabited. The environmental impact building such a country would be significant, but the carbon footprint of Israel’s war on Gaza already exceeds that of entire countries.

I live in the USA, a country built on genocide, ethnic cleansing and land theft (and slavery), and indigenous people here continue to suffer the consequences of this. The USA continues to commit atrocities at home and abroad, including its support for Israel, and I will continue to speak out against this. If the USA starts committing another genocide that is inherently tied to my ability to live on this land, I will leave.

I have no plans to live in Israel again, and I doubt I’ll ever visit again. I don’t need a country that is specifically for Jews, and I doubt Israel will ever be safe. I’m sad that I may never see my family and friends in Israel again, but this is nothing compared to all the lives that have been lost, all the families torn apart.

I don’t want any of this. None of it is necessary or inevitable. I know that Israelis are frightened and traumatized, that they want peace and safety. But this cannot come at the expense of millions of others. This genocide will not lead to peace or safety for anyone, and it must end now.

Never again for anyone.

Free Palestine.