Israeli novelist David Grossman slams war on Gaza as 'genocide'

Award-winning Israeli author and peace activist David Grossman has labelled Tel Aviv's military campaign in Gaza as "genocide," a term he admitted to using with a "broken heart".

His stark pronouncement comes amidst escalating global concern over starvation in the besieged Palestinian territory and just days after a major Israeli human rights group also employed the same term.

In an interview published Friday with the Italian daily La Repubblica, Grossman, a highly respected literary figure, revealed his reluctance to use the term previously.

"For many years, I refused to use that term: 'genocide,'" the prominent writer said. "But now, after the images I have seen and after talking to people who were there, I can't help using it."

Grossman told the paper he was using the word "with immense pain and with a broken heart."

"This word is an avalanche: once you say it, it just gets bigger, like an avalanche. And it adds even more destruction and suffering," he said.

Grossman's works, which have been translated into dozens of languages, have won many international prizes.

He also won Israel's top literary prize in 2018, the Israel Prize for Literature, for his work spanning more than three decades.

He said it was "devastating" to "put the words 'Israel' and 'famine' together" because of the Holocaust and our "supposed sensitivity to the suffering of humanity."

The celebrated author has long been a critic of the Israeli government.