Avi Steinberg, an Israeli-born author, announced on Thursday that he had formally renounced his Israeli citizenship.

Justifying his decision in an article for the left-leaning news publication Truthout, Steinberg said that Israeli citizenship had “always been a tool of genocide” that legitimised settler colonialism.

“Israeli citizenship is predicated on the worst kinds of violent crimes we know of, and on a deepening litany of lies intended to whitewash those crimes,” he argued in the op-ed.