Israel’s bombardment and intensifying blockade of Gaza in response to this month’s attack by Hamas has been condemned by 178 legal scholars from some of the US’s most prestigious law faculties in a letter to Joe Biden. Sent on the eve of the US president’s highly sensitive trip to Israel, the letter calls the Israeli reaction “collective punishment” and “a moral catastrophe” and urges Biden to seek an immediate ceasefire. While condemning the atrocities and kidnappings carried out by Hamas – the Palestinian Islamist group which runs Gaza – the missive uses the same word to denounce Israeli reprisals, which it says include depriving the enclave’s civilian population of the “basic means of survival”, including water, food and electricity. On Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike reportedly hit a Gaza hospital, where 200 and 300 people were thought to be killed. “So too we condemn the Israeli government’s escalating response, which is killing and displacing unarmed families and children in Gaza with the apparent support of the United States government,” the letter says. The Palestinian health ministry reported that 3,000 people in Gaza have been killed as of Tuesday as a result of Israel’s retaliation, including 940 children and 1,032 women. “The rising death toll among civilians in Gaza is a consequence not only of a direct military onslaught, but also the Israeli government’s deprivation of the basic means of survival for the population as a whole,” the scholars write. “As of this writing, 2.3 million people are down to a trickle of potable water.” They warn that the humanitarian crisis could yet get worse if Israel stages a ground invasion of the coastal territory. They call attention to language used by senior Israeli officials equating the civilian population with Hamas and cite a phrase used by Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, who talked about “fighting human animals”. The letter urges Biden to intervene directly. “We ask that President Biden act immediately, using all the means at his disposal to bring about a diplomatic solution to the present crisis,” it says. “This means a cease-fire in Gaza and throughout the occupied territories, along with the unconditional restoration of food, water, electricity and medical care to the entire Gaza Strip.” Forestalling possible accusations of sympathising more with Gaza’s inhabitants than Israelis, the academics write that a “great and ongoing human tragedy” was inflicted on Israeli civilians in the attack on 7 October. They add that their letter has been borne “of a conviction that a consequence of that awful day need not be further tragedy now carried out with our government’s support”.