Israeli-born author Avi Steinberg announced on Dec. 26 that he has formally renounced his Israeli citizenship, citing his belief that the privilege of citizenship has been and continues to be used as a tool of settler colonialism and genocide.
Steinberg, who was born in Jerusalem to American parents and raised in an Orthodox Jewish household, detailed his decision in an op-ed published on Truthout.
In the article, Steinberg argued that Israeli citizenship is inherently tied to violent crimes and systemic discrimination. He described Israeli citizenship as a mechanism that legitimizes colonialism, pointing to laws such as the 1948 Declaration of Independence, the 1950 Law of Return and the 1952 Citizenship Law. These laws, he claimed, were shaped by the 1948 Nakba (“the catastrophe” in Arabic), during which approximately 80 percent of the Palestinian population were violently expelled from their homes in modern-day Israeli territory in a massive ethnic cleansing campaign.
Steinberg criticized Israel for creating a facade of legitimacy through what he called “forged documents,” which he said conceal the state’s “fundamental unlawfulness.” He also reflected on his family’s history, noting that his parents migrated to Israel under the Law of Return and later settled in the United States. He described the cognitive dissonance of his parents, who opposed the U.S. invasion of Vietnam while participating in what he termed the “armed settlement of another people’s land.”
The author revealed that the house he grew up in was owned by a Palestinian family who were forcibly expelled to Jordan and barred from returning. He described this displacement as a deliberate strategy to attract settlers by marketing the “native Arab charm” of villages emptied of their original inhabitants.
Hellbound and Down 