Actress Cynthia Nixon protested outside the White House on Tuesday with other left-wing political activists, calling for a permanent cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. According to reports in the UK-based news outlet The Guardian, the protest also includes a five-day hunger strike.
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The purpose of the strike is to exert pressure on U.S. President Joe Biden and demand that the current temporary pause in fighting become permanent. “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 told The Guardian, presenting herself as “the mother of Jewish children whose grandparents are Holocaust survivors.”
Nixon also added she is tired of hearing explanations saying that civilian casualties in Gaza are part of the price of war. “There is nothing routine about these figures. There is nothing routine about these deaths,” she said.
She added that, according to reports, the number of Palestinian children killed in the Strip, reported to be standing at over 6,000, is higher than the number of children killed in 24 war zones across the world throughout 2022. “If the bombardment of the past seven weeks continued, no Palestinian homes would be left standing by Christmas Eve,” she added.
“I would like to make a personal plea to a president who has experienced such devastating personal loss. To connect with an empathy that he has acknowledged and to look at the children of Gaza and imagine that they were his children. We implore him that this current cease-fire must continue,” she said. In the protest, Nixon was seen carrying a sign reading “Biden, you are starving Gaza. Permanent cease-fire now.”
Later, in a response she gave to The Guardian, Nixon claimed that the Biden administration has been progressing “way too slow” to save lives. She added that Israel is to blame for disproportionate casualties due to the presence of the civilian population in the war against Hamas. She emphasized that she doesn’t deny Hamas's massacre on October 7.
“Let’s say there was a terrorist cell in Maryland. Would the response be to then completely bomb the civilian population because they’re hiding in a house somewhere?” she asked. “It doesn’t make any sense. We just keep getting this message that Palestinian lives are of less value. Immediately when you substitute British lives or American lives or any other nationality, you immediately see that’s crazy, how could we ever?”
The "Sex and the City" star added that she will have to break her fast, during which she planned to only drink water, in order to travel to New York for work. According to reports, left-wing activists staging the hunger strike are expected to gather until Friday from morning to the afternoon.
The hunger strike comes amid reports of escalating divisions within the Biden administration over its support for Israel's attack against Hamas, given the increasing number of casualties in the Gaza Strip and the humanitarian damage inflicted on residents. This is not the first time that left-wing protests have taken place outside the White House, where demonstrators accuse Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Nixon, 57, is known for her role as Samantha Jones in the successful series "Sex and the City" and its sequel, "And Just Like That." She also is currently starring in "The Gilded Age."