"WAR CRIMES committed by any person, any organization or any government (yours, mine, friend or foe) must be denounced and the responsible parties held accountable.”
ADVERTISEMENTRage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello has expressed condemnation of harm to any child after Jamie Lee Curtis shared a controversial post to Instagram.
The Oscar winning actress posted a photo of Gaza following the recent terrorist attacks in Israel. The image showed children running and looking up to the sky as missiles passed by with the caption, “Terror from the skies,” followed by an Israeli flag emoji.
Curtis aimed to show her support for Israel in the wake of the launch of a large-scale attack from Palestinian militant groups led by Hamas against Israel from the Gaza Strip on 7 October. However, backlash soon followed, as it turns out that the image was in fact located in Gaza.
One viewer commented: “Just to clarify, this picture is from Gaza, the children looking up at the rockets are Palestinian.”
Another said: “That’s Arabic in the back there, look at the store signs. If that was in Israel it would be Hebrew.”
Curtis has since deleted the photo off of her Instagram account.
The picture was taken by Gaza-based photojournalist Samar Abu Elouf, who shared the post over the weekend with the description: “Palestinian families seek refuge with their children from the northern Gaza Strip to UNRWA schools inside Gaza City, children are afraid of the sound of bombing who hear it during their presence due to the events on the Strip’s borders.”
Journalist Muhammad Shehada posted the photo on his X (formerly Twitter) account with the caption: “Cognitive Dissonance: Jamie Lee Curtis was deeply moved by this picture ONLY when she thought they were Israeli. As soon as she learned they were Gazan, she lost all feelings for them & deleted the picture. Suddenly, “terror from the sky” became acceptable to her & her likes!”
In response, Morello reposted the journalist’s tweet and shared to Twitter: “I’d like to make the radical proposal that the harming of children, no matter who they are & no matter who does it, is always wrong and should be condemned.”
He added: “Similarly, WAR CRIMES committed by any person, any organization or any government (yours, mine, friend or foe) must be denounced and the responsible parties held accountable.”
At the time of writing, the death toll in Gaza now stands at more than 1,350. Israeli authorities say 1,300 were killed in Hamas's surprise attack on Saturday.
Israel continues to batter Gaza with airstrikes, hitting schools, hospitals and residential areas. Palestinian officials say the enclave faces a humanitarian catastrophe, after Israel cut off electricity, fuel, food and water supplies.
