A group of high-profile Israeli public figures, including academics, artists and public intellectuals, has called for “crippling sanctions” to be imposed by the international community on Israel, amid mounting horror over its starvation of Gaza.

The 31 signatories of a letter to the Guardian include an Academy award recipient, Yuval Abraham; a former Israeli attorney general, Michael Ben-Yair; Avraham Burg, a former speaker of Israel’s parliament and former head of the Jewish Agency; and a number of recipients of the prestigious Israel prize, Israel’s highest cultural honour.

The figures come from the worlds of poetry, science, journalism and academia, and the letter accuses Israel of “starving the people of Gaza to