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Angelina Jolie slams Israel’s campaign against Hamas, demands ceasefire

‘Gaza has been an open-air prison for nearly two decades and is fast becoming a mass grave’, the actress posted on Instagram.

By Shiryn Ghermezian, The Algemeiner

Actress and filmmaker Angelina Jolie castigated Israel for its military campaign against Hamas terrorists controlling the Gaza Strip after the Palestinian terror group’s Oct. 7 pogrom in southern Israel, accusing the Jewish state of perpetrating “crimes” against Gazan civilians.

“This is the deliberate bombing of a trapped population who have nowhere to flee,” the Oscar winner wrote in an Instagram post on Wednesday. “Gaza has been an open-air prison for nearly two decades and is fast becoming a mass grave.”

Jolie then discussed innocent Gazans being affected by the ongoing Israel-Hamas war and slammed the international community for watching while Palestinian civilians “are being collectively punished and dehumanized, all while being deprived food, medicine, and humanitarian aid against international law.”

Jolie, a former ambassador for the United Nations’ refugee agency, concluded her post by voicing support for a ceasefire amid the ongoing war. She claimed that “refusing to demand a humanitarian ceasefire and blocking the UN Security Council from imposing one on both parties, world leaders are complicit in these crimes.”

Her post accompanied a photo and description of Jabalia, Gaza‘s largest refugee camp. Israel’s military said that it killed a second Hamas commander in Jabalia on Wednesday in their second strike on the refugee camp. Also on Wednesday, the first group of civilians from Gaza were evacuated into Egypt through the Rafah border crossing. At least 320 foreign passport holders, dozens of severely injured Gazans, and at least 49 medical evacuees made their way into Egypt through the border crossing on Wednesday, according to Reuters.

The border crossing was also open on Thursday and reportedly some 7,500 foreign passport holders would be evacuated from Gaza over the course of roughly two weeks.

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Israel has been launching air strikes and ground operations against Hamas targets in Gaza since Oct. 7, when the terrorist group invaded the Jewish state and massacred 1,400 people, mostly civilians. The terrorists also injured thousands of civilians and kidnapped more than 200 people, taking them back to Gaza.

Hamas has notoriously used civilians as human shields in conflict against Israel, blocking them from evacuating and putting its weapons and other military targets by civilian sites.

Jolie’s Instagram post was the second time that she addressed the war — each time, she failed to mention Hamas by name or the ongoing rockets fired on Israeli civilians by the terror group.

On Sunday, the Mr. & Mrs. Smith star posted a lengthy statement on Instagram expressing sympathy with the Israeli victims of the attack and the hostages taken, before turning her attention to those affected in the Gaza Strip.

“Like millions around the world I have spent the last weeks sick and angry at the terrorist attack in Israel, the death of so many innocent civilians, and wondering how best to help,” she mourned. “I too am praying for the immediate, safe return of every hostage, and for the families who carry the unimaginable pain of a murder of a loved one. Above all, the children murdered, and the many children now orphaned.”

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“What happened in Israel is an act of terror. But that cannot justify the innocent lives lost in bombing a civilian population in Gaza that has nowhere to go, no access to food or water, no possibility of evacuation, and not even the basic human right to cross a border to seek refuge,” she wrote, before Egypt opened its border for Gaza evacuees following a deal between Egypt, Israel, and Hamas that was mediated by Qatar.

Jolie claimed Gaza’s population has been living “under a severe blockade for nearly two decades” and said the aid they are getting is not enough.

“The few aid trucks that are entering are a fraction of what is needed (and was delivered daily before the present conflict), and the bombings are causing desperate new humanitarian needs daily. The denial of aid, fuel, and water is collectively punishing a people,” she said. “Humanity demands an immediate ceasefire. Palestinian and Israeli lives – and the lives of all people globally – matter equally.”

According to several media reports and the Israeli military, Hamas has been hoarding hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel without giving any to Gaza’s civilian population.

Israel has agreed to allow 100 trucks of humanitarian aid into Gaza each day.