More than 300 survivors of and descendants of survivors of the Nazi holocaust have issued a statement condemning the "genocide" of Palestinians in Gaza.
In the statement, which was released by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and printed in the New York Times on Saturday, the group said it unequivocally condemned "the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing occupation and colonisation of historic Palestine."
The statement was signed by 40 Jewish survivors and 287 descendants.
"We are alarmed by the extreme, racist dehumanisation of Palestinians in Israeli society, which has reached a fever-pitch," they said.
"We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people."
The statement was written in response to a letter by Nobel prize-winning author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel that accused Hamas of using children as human shields.
In the controversial letter - that appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times and the Washington Post, among others - the author labelled Hamas a "death cult".
"Do the two cultures that brought us the Psalms of David and the rich libraries of the Ottoman Empire not share a love of life, of transmitting wisdom and opportunity to their children? And is any of this discernible in the dark future offered by Hamas to Arab children, to be suicide bombers or human shields for rockets?" he said.
The survivors and descendants behind the latest ad took issue with Wiesel’s message.
"We are disgusted and outraged by Elie Wiesel’s abuse of our history in these pages to justify the unjustifiable: Israel’s wholesale effort to destroy Gaza the murder of more than 2,000 Palestinians, including any hundreds of children," they said in the statement.
"Nothing can justify bombing UN shelters, homes, hospitals and universities."
