Avi Steinberg, an Israeli-born author, announced on Thursday that he had formally renounced his Israeli citizenship. In an article for the left-leaning news outlet Truthout, Steinberg justified his decision, calling Israeli citizenship “a tool of genocide” that supports settler colonialism. Steinberg criticized Israel’s founding and laws, arguing that Israeli citizenship is rooted in violent crimes and a series of lies designed to justify them. He traced this history back to the 1948 Nakba, when Israeli forces expelled approximately 80 percent of the Palestinian population. Born in Jerusalem to American parents and raised in an Orthodox Jewish setting, Steinberg moved to the US in 1993. He cited several key laws passed after Israel’s establishment, such as the 1948 Declaration of Independence, the Law of Return in 1950, and the 1952 Citizenship Law, as key enablers of colonialism and discrimination.