Israeli-born author renounces citizenship, calling it 'a tool of genocide'

Avi Steinberg, an Israeli-born author, announced on Thursday that he had formally renounced his Israeli citizenship.

Justifying his decision in an article for the left-leaning news publication Truthout, Steinberg said that Israeli citizenship had "always been a tool of genocide" that legitimised settlers colonialism.

"Israeli citizenship is predicated on the worst kinds of violent crimes we know of, and on a deepening litany of lies intended to whitewash those crimes," he claimed in the op-ed.

The author was born in Jerusalem to American parents and raised in an ultra-Orthodox setting. In 1993, his family moved back to the US, first to Cleveland and then to Boston, where his father got a job as a director at Harvard University. 

Steinberg cited a number of laws passed following Israel's founding that legitimised colonialism and discrimination, including the 1948 Declaration of Independence, the Law of Return in 1950, and the 1952 Citizenship Law.

Read more: Israeli-born author renounces citizenship, calling it 'a tool of genocide'