Many world leaders, historians, authors, journalists, and celebrities around the world haven't shied away from voicing their opinion on the Israeli apartheid and its defiance of international human rights.

Here are five famous figures and their perspectives on the Palestinian struggle:

1. Noam Chomsky (1928- )

noam chomsky, activism,org, old, black and white,
Source: Activism.org

Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, historian, and political activist. He is known for his support of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement - a global campaign with the sole purpose of imposing economic pressure on Israel to comply with international law.

Chomsky has always been vocal about his views on Israel and its supporters. 

"People who call themselves supporters of Israel are actually supporters of its moral degeneration and ultimate destruction." 

He also calls out offenses against the Palestinians and reflects upon Western mindsets in the Middle East. In his book, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians, Chomsky writes:

“Of course all such conclusions about appropriate actions against the rich and powerful are based on a fundamental flaw: This is us, and that is them. This crucial principle, deeply embedded in Western culture, suffices to undermine even the most precise analogy and the most impeccable reasoning.” 

This mindset surely explains one of Zionism's most popular slogans in the 1900s: "A land without a people for a people without a land." 

2. Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

chirstopher hitchens, author, american, 2008,
Source: Wikipedia

Hitchens is an English-born American journalist, author, and critic, with contributions to over 30 books and publications.

The anti-totalitarian author believed in the Palestinians' right to their own land.

In his book Hitch-22: A Memoir, he writes: 

''If the Palestinian people really wish to decide that they will battle to the very end to prevent partition or annexation of even an inch of their ancestral soil, then I have to concede that that is their right. I even think that a sixty-year rather botched experiment in marginal quasi-statehood is something that the Jewish people could consider abandoning.''

Or simply put:

“You can't have occupation and human rights.” 

3. Chris Hedges (1956- )

Hedges is an American Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist who covered wars all over the world and contributed to publications such as The New York Times. 

His Gaza coverage changed his perspective, leading him to believe Israel intends on ethnically cleansing the city. In his article Why Israel Lieshe writes:

"[...] Israel engages in the kinds of jaw-dropping lies that characterize despotic and totalitarian regimes. It does not deform the truth; it inverts it. It routinely paints a picture for the outside world that is diametrically opposed to reality.

And all of us reporters who have covered the occupied territories have run into Israel’s Alice-in-Wonderland narratives, which we dutifully insert into our stories — required under the rules of American journalism — although we know they are untrue." 

4. Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

mahatma gandhi, wikipedia, black and white,
Source: Wikipedia

Gandhi is India's independence leader and an international symbol of freedom and human rights worldwide. 

In a 1938 letter, he responded to multiple Jewish requests to back the Zionist cause, to which he writes:

“Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs... Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.” 

5. Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)

The Russian-born American author had contributed to over 500 books during his lifetime and is still recognized as the "master of the science-fiction genre."

In Asimov's 1993 book, Asimov Laughs Again: More Than 700 Jokes, Limericks and Anecdotes, he shares his thoughts on the creation of the Jewish state.

“I am frequently asked if I have visited Israel, whereas yet, it is simply assumed that I have. Well, I don’t travel. I really don’t, and if I did, I probably wouldn’t visit Israel. I remember how it was in 1948 when Israel was being established and all my Jewish friends were ecstatic, I was not. I said: what are we doing? We are establishing ourselves in a ghetto, in a small corner of a vast Muslim sea."

He then provides insights to what this conflicting state would cause:

"The Muslims will never forget nor forgive, and Israel, as long as it exists, will be embattled. I was laughed at, but I was right. I can’t help but feel that the Jews didn’t really have the right to appropriate a territory only because 2000 years ago, people they consider their ancestors, were living there. History moves on and you can’t really turn it back.''