Thinking Straight About the Israel-Hamas War

What's right about a clear-eyed letter from Columbia faculty and wrong about calls for a ceasefire by the Carter Center and others.

Events in the Middle East and at home are so disturbing that I’ve decided to do something different this week. I’m posting two statements on the Israel-Hamas War — one from more than 300 Columbia University and Barnard College faculty that I would have signed had I taught there; the other from the Carter Center, which — not surprisingly, given its founder — this week issued a call for peace. Below each statement, I try to unpack some of the questions raised in the text. My comments on the excellent Columbia letter — and the awful ones from students and morally obtuse faculty that preceded it — will reflect my support for a full reassessment of the purpose and performance of American higher education; on the Carter Center statement, I’ll weigh the validity of a ceasefire, and tell you what Jimmy Carter is likely thinking right now. At the end, I post a cogent whiteboard by a British rabbi explaining why anti-Semitism is a virus of history.

An Open Letter from Columbia University, Barnard College and Teachers College Faculty on the Campus Conversation About Hamas’s Atrocities and the War in Israel and Gaza

There are many statements, letters, and counter letters circulating, and we have no interest in waging a war of words while an actual war is raging. Still, given what we have heard from others on campus, we are moved to write to emphasize three simple points.

First, at a great university like Columbia, there should be robust debate about complex and difficult issues, such as whether a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is appropriate or feasible, who is to blame for the miserable conditions in Gaza, and what the wisest strategy is, going forward, to produce a just and secure peace in the region.  The signatories to this letter themselves have diverse views on these subjects. The university must foster an environment where debate on these important issues can proceed without intimidation or harassment.

At the same time, there is no excuse for Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israeli civilians, which was an egregious war crime. There is no justification for raping and murdering ordinary citizens in front of their families, mutilating babies, decapitating people, using automatic weapons and grenades to hunt down and murder young people at a music festival celebrating peace, burning families alive, kidnapping and taking hostages (including vulnerable populations of elderly, people with disabilities, and young children), parading women hostages in front of chanting crowds, and proudly documenting these nightmarish scenes on social media. We are horrified that anyone would celebrate these monstrous attacks or, as some members of the Columbia faculty have done in a recent letter, try to “recontextualize” them as a “salvo,” as the "exercise of a right to resist" occupation, or as “military action.” We are astonished that anyone at Columbia would try to legitimize an organization that shares none of the University’s core values of democracy, human rights, or the rule of law.  Any civilian loss of life during war is awful but, as colleagues on the faculty acknowledged in the letter mentioned above, the law of war clearly distinguishes between tragic but incidental civilian death and suffering, on one hand, and the deliberate targeting of civilians, on the other. We feel sorrow for all civilians who are killed or suffering in this war, including so many in Gaza. Yet whatever one thinks of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or of Israeli policies, Hamas’s genocidal massacre was an act of terror and cannot be justified, or its true purpose obscured with euphemisms and oblique references. We ask the entire University community to condemn the Hamas attack unambiguously. We doubt anyone would try to justify this sort of atrocity if it were directed against the residents of a nation other than Israel.

Finally, the University cannot tolerate violence, speech that incites it, or hate speech. Just as we condemn any bigoted comments or acts directed at Palestinian and Muslim students, we are appalled by the spate of antisemitic incidents on campus since October 7. These incidents, which include antisemitic epithets, physical assault, and swastikas scrawled on bathroom walls, are growing in frequency and are creating a hostile and unsafe environment that impacts our entire community. In the same way that the University defends other groups from this sort of disgusting conduct, it is essential to do the same for Jewish and Israeli students. To do otherwise would betray our ideals and the values of Columbia as a great university.

This fine letter should be a model for statements from other institutions and communities. Higher ed, in particular, must now face a reckoning. It will either retreat to the status quo ante, failing to instill the proper “ideals and values” in students or undertake a much-needed assessment of what a liberal arts education — or any education — means.

The latter will entail a serious and sustained intellectual struggle, as this appalling letter signed earlier by dozens of academics at the same university, Columbia, suggests. It endorses “a student-written statement that situated the military action begun on October 7th within the larger context of the occupation of Palestine by Israel.” It continued: “One could regard the events of October 7th…as an occupied people exercising a right to resist.”

Think about that for a second. Here are professors at a top American university describing unspeakable atrocities against civilians as a “military action” and merely the natural exercise of a “right to resist.” Whoa.

These twisted arguments are being peddled on campuses across the country. “Students spouting ideological catchphrases have revealed their moral obliviousness and the deficiency of their educations,” Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist at Penn, wrote in the Times last week: “But the deeper problem is not them. It is what they are being taught — or, more specifically, what they are not being taught.”

Emanuel rightly points out that colleges and universities need a mandatory new ethics curriculum:

Ethics are rarely either/or. It is possible to condemn the barbarism of Hamas and condemn the endless Israeli occupation of the West Bank. So, too, is it possible to condemn the treatment of women and the L.G.B.T.Q. community in Arab lands and the attempt by right-wing Israeli politicians to neuter Israel’s Supreme Court. But without the ability to distinguish between right and wrong and to recognize the fallacies of moral equivalence, students won’t be able to marshal the nuanced reasoning and careful assessment of responsibility required in times like these.

We in the academy need to look more deeply at how it is possible that so many undergraduates, graduate students, law students and faculty at our nation’s finest colleges and universities could have such moral blinders.”

Yascha Mounk has written an important book, The Identity Trap, that begins that deeper look and Simon Sebag Montefiore brilliantly explains the consequences of the left’s bogus narrative of the “colonizing” of the Middle East. If I could recommend one article for true historical context, Montefiore’s would be it.

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After an October 8 statement deploring the attacks on civilians, the Carter Center issued this statement on October 31:

Carter Center Calls for Cease-fire in Gaza, Return of Hostages, Opening of Humanitarian Corridors

This weekend, Israeli forces moved into Gaza and intensified their devastating attacks. Israel, like all nations, has a right to defend itself; it also has the obligation of proportionality under international law. Violence will only beget more violence. We urge all parties to agree to a cease-fire. We ask for the opening of humanitarian corridors into Gaza and the reinstatement of essential services to the area. We urge the immediate, safe return of all hostages, and we call on both sides to abide by international law.

Hamas is responsible for the horrific Oct. 7 massacre of more than 1,400 innocent people in Israel and the taking of more than 200 hostages. And the innocent people of Gaza are now unfairly suffering from the ongoing conflict and the acute humanitarian crisis that has unfolded. Israel’s devastating strikes have killed more than 8,000 people, overwhelmingly civilians, including over 3,000 children. Tens of thousands more have lost their homes, and the entire population urgently needs medicine, food, water, and electricity. We call on Israel to enable essential services to reach Gaza so lives can be saved.

We also decry the rise of antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian sentiments around the world, which is spreading fear through hateful speech and acts. Dehumanization is a gateway to violence and must be condemned wherever it arises.

Collective punishment is contrary to international law. So is the murder of civilians. The violence must stop now. There is no military solution to this crisis, only a political one that acknowledges the common humanity of both Israelis and Palestinians, respects the human rights of all, and creates a path for both societies to live side by side in peace.

I’m told the Carter Center staff wrote this statement. It’s unclear if it was approved by the 99-year-old former president, who is frail and in home hospice, but seems consistent with the quasi-pacifist views Jimmy Carter has expressed since leaving the presidency. Carter’s point that “dehumanization is a gateway to violence” is an important one for the world to understand; many Israelis and Palestinians don’t. 

Carter is correct that “there is no military solution to this crisis, only a political one” — if he’s defining “crisis” as the broader conflict of the last 75 years. There is no way for Israel to win this war if it cannot finally move to a lasting peace.

But if the Carter Center is talking about the short-term security crisis, then there is indeed a military solution — the destruction of Hamas so that it can no longer threaten Israel. Let’s remember that it was Hamas that broke the ceasefire on October 7. A short “humanitarian pause,” as recommended by Secretary of State Tony Blinken, might help ease the crisis engulfing Gaza; at a minimum, it would allow Egypt to begin letting Palestinians into its many hospitals, which it should have done three weeks ago. But a full ceasefire is a bad idea now because it would spare the Hamas military infrastructure from destruction. It’s a moot point—Israel will not allow it to remain intact. The tragic deaths of civilians (many of them children forced by Hamas to be human shields or denied access to shelter in the tunnels reserved for militants) and the brutal urban combat to come must not prevent the IDF from completing its mission. Should the United States have agreed to a ceasefire after Pearl Harbor? Before D-Day? While President Obama was destroying ISIS? While Hamas fighters are hiding in tunnels without providing a single shelter for civilians? Of course not. 

As I explain in my book, Jimmy Carter held two meetings with Hamas. The first came in 2006 when his goal was to end Hamas’ schism with the Palestinian Authority so that Israel would have a single Palestinian negotiating partner. This was the opposite of Benjamin Netanyahu’s position. Bibi, as we’ve known for years, propped up Hamas so that the Palestinians would remain bitterly split and thus could not negotiate for a state. Even as they represented diametrically opposed positions on Palestinian statehood, both men proved equally naive about Hamas — Netanyahu about its terrorist capabilities and Carter about its capacity to evolve into something more humane.

At considerable personal risk, Carter traveled to Gaza in 2008 to urge Hamas to release an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, whom it had seized as a hostage. Carter lost the presidency in part because of the Iran hostage crisis, but he remained proud that he was able to bring all 52 American hostages home safely after more than 14 months in captivity. Israelis with little use for Carter still respected his efforts in the Shalit case, though he failed. (Shalit was finally released in 2011 in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, including Yahya Sinwar, who masterminded the October 7 attacks.)

On several occasions, Carter told me that his greatest regret about losing to Ronald Reagan in 1980 was that he lost his chance to complete the Camp David Accords — which forged not just peace between Israel and Egypt but a process to establish a Palestinian state. In our conversations, Carter grew passionate about what he always called “the Holy Land.” He convinced me he could have used his leverage in a second term to block Menachem Begin’s West Bank settlements and win a lasting peace.

I have a good sense of what’s going through his mind this month as he sits with Rosalynn in their modest ranch-style home in Plains, Georgia. He wishes he hadn’t tripped and fallen in the dark when he got up before dawn one day to go hunting in 2019. If he weren’t hobbled by age, Jimmy Carter would be in the region right now, trying to free the hostages and keep the bullets and missiles from flying. 

One final note: The butchery of October 7 is rooted not just in a desire for "liberation" but in old-fashioned anti-Semitism. Why is this virus of history so persistent and contagious? In 2017, Jonathan Sacks, a well-known British rabbi, offered this cogent and compelling explanation, only five minutes long: