Some 1,000 musicians, writers, actors and others have signed a petition demanding Israel stop the war in Gaza, drawing fierce backlash from a smattering of dissenters within the creative community’s ranks Sunday.

The petition, titled “Stop the Horror in Gaza,” accuses Israel’s leaders of deliberately starving Gazans and killing innocent Palestinians, ratcheting up simmering anti-war sentiment with harsh rhetoric largely outside Israel’s mainstream until now.

“Against our values and will, we find ourselves complicit in the horrific actions carried out by our government in Gaza: the killing of children and civilians, policies of starvation, mass displacement, and the senseless destruction of entire cities,” the signatories write.

The statement urges those involved in the war to disobey “illegal orders” and to “not commit war crimes,” calling for an end to the war and the return of all hostages.

Among the signatories were singers Chava Alberstein and Gidi Gov, jazz artist Avishai Cohen, writers David Grossman and Etgar Keret, playwright Yehoshua Sobol, actress Hanna Laszlo, animator David Polonsky, and choreographer Ohad Naharin.

A list of the signatories as of 3:30 p.m. Tuesday published by Channel 12 news included 974 names and 62 others who wished to remain anonymous, though the list included many people outside of the creative community, such as therapists, an electrician, teachers and a landscape architect.

Following the publication of the petition, some artists lashed out at the signatories, including singer, actor and reserves soldier Idan Amedi, who called them “out of touch… zeros,” though he later deleted the latter term.

“A troupe of the privileged who continue to echo idiocy, ignorance and lies,” he wrote on Instagram.

“On a day in which we see our brothers in 2025 like Muselmanns underground, digging their own graves,” he added, in reference to recently published footage showing a skeletal Evyatar David, who is being held by Hamas, and Islamic Jihad hostage Rom Braslavski looking pale and thin. Muselmann was a term used by prisoners in Nazi concentration camps for those on the verge of death from starvation and exhaustion.

“Go into the tunnels, fight for a day like tens of thousands of reservists and then sign the petition,” wrote Amedi, who was seriously injured in a Gaza explosion that killed six other soldiers in January 2024. “We’re sick of you.”

Actress Moran Atias posted online that her “blood boiled” when she was approached to sign the letter.

“To do this when pictures of our brethren are filmed with the same cruel cynicism of pictures from the Holocaust, which we already went through,” she wrote.

A similar petition was signed by 1,400 architects, designers and visual artists.

“Horror on a historic scale is taking place before our eyes,” that petition read. “We have the responsibility as humans and as Israelis facing horrors happening in our name against a population located a few kilometers from us, in an impossible reality and terrible suffering.”

While many in Israel have long called to end the war, the demands have largely been born out of a concern for the hostages and for the well-being of soldiers rather than focusing primarily on the suffering of Gazans.

Recent weeks have seen an upswelling in concern around the world, and in Israel as well, as accounts of mass hunger inside the Strip have proliferated, with aid slow to reach Gazan civilians.