Hundreds of A-list celebrities have signed two contrasting letters, a pro-Israel letter calling for the release of Hamas’ hostages, and a pro-Palestine letter demanding an immediate ceasefire and aid into Gaza.

In the 20 days since Hamas’ bloody attack on Israel, thousands of innocent lives have been lost. Over 1,400 Israelis were killed by the militants, and the country then began a bloody siege of Gaza that has claimed over 7,000 lives and left the region running out of food, fuel, water, medicine and other essentials.

Now, two letters have emerged on both sides of the Atlantic, backed by famous actors and artists in the US and UK. A pro-Israel letter calls for the immediate release of the people kidnapped and taken hostage by militant group Hamas, to be the single priority while the other demands a ceasefire to get aid into Gaza for innocent Palestinians.

Some of Hollywood’s heaviest hitters signed the first letter, shared under the hashtag #NoHostageLeftBehind, including the likes of Katy Perry, Amy Schumer, Orlando Bloom, Justin Timberlake, Star Wars stars Mark Hamill and Ewan McGregor, and a number of famous Jewish performers including Adam Sandler, Sacha Baron Cohen, Gal Gadot, and Jerry Seinfield.

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Meanwhile, over 2,000 artists, including the likes of Tilda Swinton, Steve Coogan, Miriam Margoyles, Maxine Peake, Peter Mullan, and Khalid Abdalla signed a letter shared by Artists for Palestine UK. It accused the UK government of “aiding and abetting” Israel’s “war crimes” and called on them to end their support for the country.

The Artists for Palestine letter cited the Israeli Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant’s depiction of Palestinians as “human animals” to show that they have “become people to whom almost anything can be done”. The minister made the comments as he cut off all water, power, food and medicine to the over two million Gazans.

The #NoHostageLeftBehind letter was organised by Creative Community for Peace – a non-profit within the entertainment industry aimed at ending the boycott of Israel. The letter said they were “heartened” by the recent release of two American hostages “Judith Ranaan and her daughter Natalie Ranaan and by today’s release of two Israelis, Nurit Cooper and Yocheved Lifshitz, whose husbands remain in captivity.”

They added their relief was “tempered” by the remaining 220 hostages who remained in Hamas’ grip. They added: “Thank you for your unshakable moral conviction, leadership, and support for the Jewish people, who have been terrorized by Hamas since the group’s founding over 35 years ago, and for the Palestinians, who have also been terrorized, oppressed, and victimized by Hamas for the last 17 years that the group has been governing Gaza.”

But the letter stopped short of calling for an end to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, or an end to its siege which has left hospitals on the brink of collapse. The pro-Palestinian letter meanwhile demanded an “an immediate ceasefire and the opening of Gaza’s crossings to allow humanitarian aid to enter unhindered”.

Other signatories of the Artists for Palestine letter include: Robert del Naja, playwrights Tanika Gupta and Abbie Spallen, directors Mike Leigh, Dominic Cooke and Asif Kapadia, comedians Frankie Boyle and Josie Long, authors Marina Warner, Jacqueline Rose, Gillian Slovo and Courttia Newland, and poets Anthony Anaxagorou and Michael Rosen, and visual artists Tai Shani and Oreet Ashery, Larissa Sansour, Rosalind Nashashibi, P. Staff, Florence Peake and Georgina Starr, and more.

Signatories of the #NoHostageLeftBehind letter included: Sting, Stephen Fry, Bradley Cooper, Chris Rock, Rita Ora, Taika Waiti, Paul Rudd, Olivia Wilde, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Bella Thorne, Jimmy Carr, Matt Lucas, Zoe Saldana, Will Ferrell, Seth Meyers, Lana Del Ray, Julia Fox, Jordan Peele, David Schwimmer, Adam Levine, Anthony Russo, and more.

On October 7, militant group Hamas blindsided Israel with a surprise attack across the Gaza-Israel border. Gunman surged into towns and communities and slaughtered innocents, killing over 1,400 people in total. They also took over two hundred hostages as they retreated back to their hideouts. In the 20 days since, Israel has conducted a brutal siege of Gaza, that has left over 7,000 people dead, as innocents are caught up in its war against Hamas.

In the wake of the Hamas attack, Israel, led by right wing president Benjamin Netanyahu, cut off all power, water, and medicine to Gaza – a country already heavily reliant upon humanitarian aid. This sparked concerns of a crisis within the region, one of the most densely populated in the world, with leading charities calling for a ceasefire to allow aid in.

For a time, Israel refused to allow aid into the country, as it continued bombarding Gaza, ordering half the region to evacuate their homes and move south. The area always suffered from immense water insecurity, made worse by the war. Yesterday, Hamas’s militant arm, the Al-Qassam Brigades, claimed that Israeli strikes killed 50 hostages.

Signatories of the #NoHostageLeftBehind letter:

Signatories of the Artists for Palestine UK letter