Cynthia Nixon, the Sex and the City star and former New York gubernatorial candidate, announced that she is on a hunger strike along with other activists in protest of Israel‘s attacks Gaza, which came following Hamas’ brutal terrorist killings and kidnapping of Jewish residents.
Nixon protested the death of civilians in Gaza during Israel’s counter-bombing campaign on the Hamas-held area.
“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 everyone,” Nixon said during a protest in front of the White House on Monday.
“In seven weeks, Israel has killed more civilians on a tiny strip of land than was killed in 20 years of war in the entire country of Afghanistan,” she said, citing reports from Gaza officials on the death toll.
“I am sick and tired of people explaining this away by saying civilian casualties are a routine toll of war. There is nothing routine about these figures. There is nothing routine about these deaths,” she said.
The hunger strike is going on all week, but Nixon told the Guardian that she would interrupt her fast for work commitments.
Nixon called on President Joe Biden, “who has experienced such devastating personal loss,” to “connect with that empathy which he is so well known and to look at the children of Gaza and imagine that they were his children.”
Nixon’s call for a ceasefire reflects the divisions on the left — and, to an extent, within the entertainment industry — over calls for a ceasefire following the Oct. 7 attacks.