On October 11, 2023, only 4 days after the attacks, you wrote a response letter, together with the director and current rector of the Hebrew University, to the presidents of Harvard and Stanford Universities, which is unusually clear in its wording — at least for the academic world. In the letter, entitled "You have failed us," you criticize their attitude of impartial detachment from the current situation, and argue that a morally relativistic approach is not appropriate in view of the incredibly brutal killings of more than 1,200 Israelis and non-Israelis by Hamas. Can you say something about the main reasons that you as an institution very quickly took a public stand on this?
Some people criticized us, asking why we expect a university president to make a public statement about each and every case. Of course, if something is not directly related to a university, maybe that’s not the optimal way of dealing with it, and it's legitimate that the university will disregard it, will ignore it, will not publish anything. And we will not criticize any of the universities abroad if they fail to condemn Hamas. But in this case, the Harvard president published a position paper, along with the deans, in response to a publication by thirty of their student groups. And the same is true of Stanford. When there are views that are completely unacceptable, such as the view published by these student organizations, saying that Israel is exclusively responsible for the attack by Hamas and avoiding any condemnation of Hamas, and the presidents have this on their table and decide to respond, then we expect them to counter and to refer to the real facts on the ground.
Their neutral attitude troubled us. It was a combination of the fact that there were already expressions of support for Hamas within the campuses, which is highly troubling, and that at the same time they published something very neutral. We thought that this was completely unacceptable, and therefore we wrote this letter. So it was, as you said, a few days after the attack. It was before the campuses there became hostile to Jewish students. It was at a very early stage.
Did you receive any reactions from these universities?
We received a response from both presidents. They revised their statements, but not only because we wrote a letter. Announcements from donors that they will stop donating and letters from some of their faculty members played a role as well. So it helped a bit, but these two revised versions were not optimal from my perspective. They were still quite reluctant to condemn Hamas, but it was a step in the right direction. However, we are not in the business of representing the State of Israel or representing the Jewish people or Jewish students. It's not that we monitor the letters that each and every one writes. I, at least, wrote it simply as a member of the academic world. We are part of the same academic community, and we thought this is something that we should inform them about, that we believed that they were wrong in their position.
Many of the academic letters currently circulating still assume that the current war is just another version of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Increasingly, the entire program of international criminal law is being invoked, from apartheid to collective punishment to genocide. While Israel is accused of committing all these acts, Hamas is often exempted. One would expect academics to be able to differentiate between Hamas and the IDF, between massacre, pogrom, war and genocide. How do you explain these reactions, especially from academics abroad?
Well, I think that we can distinguish between three issues here. One issue is a total condemnation of what Hamas did. This is an easy case from a moral perspective. Or it should have been an easy case. And honestly, it's hard for me to explain why people find it difficult to state the obvious there. The other two issues are more complicated. One is the legitimacy of what the IDF is doing in Gaza in response to the attack. And the other is the background, the context, as people sometimes call it — the occupation and the settlements and their relationship to what's going on now.
With regard to the immediate reaction of the IDF to what happened on October 7, there are two types of criticism, one illegitimate and the other legitimate. The illegitimate criticism is to refer to what the IDF is doing as if it were revenge, retaliation, with simply the aim to kill as many Palestinians as possible. Presenting the story in this way is misleading. These people might not know the facts, but more realistically, they say this because they don't want to be involved in the more delicate discussion. Or it might be the result of antisemitism. It might be a result of some bias.
Where does the delicate discussion start? What would be a legitimate criticism of Israel's actions against Hamas in Gaza?
There is a legitimate question. We know that the main aims of the IDF activity are, first, to make sure that Hamas does not attack us again. And the leaders of Hamas are openly stating that — they intend to do a second October 7, and a third one, and a millionth one. They say it repeatedly, they’re not hiding it.
So, Israel is responsible for at least weakening Hamas, to lower the threat in the future. And the other aim is, of course, to release the hostages. These aims justify unintentionally killing civilians. At the same time, these two aims, as important as they are, cannot justify killing an unlimited number of civilians. Of course, there is a limit. It is prohibited to cause excessive damage, and the question is, what damage is excessive and what isn't? And this is a question to which, I must admit, no one has the definitive answer. There’s the term proportionality. And we all know how to think about it in a common situation — morality in small cases, in issues that are confined in their effect — but we don't really know how to apply it in cases of war. It's very hard to evaluate what type of harm is proportional. And this is troubling all of us. Whether what the army is actually doing now is proportional or not is a delicate question. And you ask why people avoid this delicate discussion. Maybe because they want a clear answer. They don't like nuances because they are engaged in politics rather than law. Still, it's an open debate, but it must be based on a very clear evaluation of what's happening on the ground.
In the context of the current war, how do you view the question of the occupation, which is increasingly utilized to explain the Hamas attacks, unfortunately often trivializing them as a result?
Now I get to the third issue, which is much more difficult to deal with. This has to do with the background, with the context: the Israeli occupation. Now again, it is clear that, from any possible perspective, occupation cannot justify what Hamas did. The question is whether it is legitimate to criticize Israel for the fact that there is no peace in the area. But here again, the story is much more complicated. People must admit, first, that Hamas is against peace. They regularly act when there is some prospect of peace — this time with Saudi Arabia. Second, we should realize that Gaza was not under occupation. There is this statement all the time that Gaza is under siege. But people don't say why it was under siege, what happened there. And we know that it came to be controlled in this way because Hamas attacked Israel after the disengagement plan, since 2006-2007. And third, there is the context of the occupation. We need some kind of future. The problem with the government of Israel over time is that it has failed to present its plan. What are the long-term plans for Gaza and, of course, for the West Bank? It's a problem, and I think that one thing we should learn from the reaction of the international community is that we cannot afford to continue ignoring the hardships that the occupation causes.
But my concern is that this one-sided reaction by the international academic community makes it much easier for Israelis to continue to ignore the occupation. Calling for one state, a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea” makes it much easier for Israelis to ignore the occupation if the alternative is that it's either us or them. It's a zero-sum game. But if you say, “Well, the long-term solution for the conflict is the two-state solution,” this would result, I hope, in greater willingness by Israelis to hear the criticism. It makes it easier for Israelis to ignore criticism when it is done in such a simplistic way, taking the position not only of the Palestinians but of Hamas. So, adopting this policy of Hamas and calling for one Palestinian state from the river to the sea means that you are not only against Israel, but also against the prospect that there will ever be peace here. I'm saying all that not only to criticize the international community but also to ourselves, to Israelis.
One of the most recent open letters was published in the New York Review of Books on November 20, 2023, under the title "The Misuse of Holocaust Memory." The initiators focus on the Netanyahu government and its comparison of Hamas to the Nazis. I keep wondering not only whether such an exclusive focus on the current government ignores the fact that the misuse is practised on almost all sides, including the Palestinian side, but also whether such a focus on the Israeli far-right mutes the important voices of the parliamentary opposition and civic society. The comparison of Hamas to Nazis is not the dominant discourse here in Israel. For example, when it comes to Hamas's methods of murder, it is much more common to compare it with ISIS. How do you explain this exclusive focus on the far-right voices in Israel, and what impact does this have on the general understanding of what is happening here?
Well, I think it’s an easy target. We all remember that the Russians justified their occupation of Ukraine with, “They are the Nazis.” And of course, there it was a completely baseless accusation. Here, I can understand those who refer to Hamas as Nazis in terms of their cruelty, which reminds some people of Babyn Yar, for example. On October 7, there were incidents that people survived because they were able to hide under the bodies of friends, and this is a Babyn Yar experience. And so, I understand this because we are all familiar with this history. There is this reference. But of course, I think that it is an exaggeration to compare Hamas to the Nazis in terms of scale, of the magnitude of threat. It's counterproductive, and it is not at the heart of even the Israeli government to explain what happened. The more prevalent view is, as you said, “Hamas is ISIS,” and this, I think, is more relevant in the current circumstances. It's hard to explain why those who criticize us prefer to focus on this small group. Maybe it's just a strategy of composing their own argument by using this perspective. It seems to me beside the point. It's not the real issue here. The issue here is: What is the right response to Hamas? There is an interesting historical anecdote that goes back thirty years, and it relates to Germany, Israel, and the US. Back when the Oslo Accords were drafted, there was a debate about whether we should put in the agreement a ban on certain political parties. I'm not referring here to Hamas as neo-Nazis, one of the parties that was disqualified in Germany. But the question should be asked whether Hamas should be allowed or should be disqualified from future elections. I think that the debate whether Hamas are Nazis or not can be more informed if we refer to it in terms of political participation.
Does all this — the very aggressive anti-Israeli and antisemitic riots at foreign universities, the inadequate reactions of a not insignificant part of the academic community, the one-sided open letters — affect future academic cooperation?
Well, let me say two things about that first, to add another complication. We have Palestinian students, Israeli–Palestinian students and faculty members, here at the university. And when we compose our responses, we cannot afford to ignore them. And there was some backlash in this respect. When universities, when the faculty members presented views that those on the other side saw as one-sided, it marginalized some of the Arab–Israelis on campus. So it's something that we should consider. And the other issue is that Israeli academia, because of its small size, is very open to the world. It relies very heavily on international academia. We publish almost exclusively in international journals, not in Hebrew journals. All our academic decisions about appointments, promotions, and things like that are based on reviews made by international scholars, not by Israeli scholars. And we have many international collaborations. You are expected to be part of your international academic field. And there is a concern, as you said, that the BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions] movement or this idea that we cannot be part of this community is detrimental. It would be the end of Israeli academia. We cannot allow ourselves to be this kind of isolated island. We are too small for that. In addition to the frustration from a political perspective, there is a real risk that we would not be able to operate as academia. It's something that disturbs us. But I think that the answer cannot be, “Well, let's ignore them. They’re biased.” We cannot afford it. So the only answer must be a polite, detailed response, referring to the arguments they are making, trying to convince them. We understand that there are those who would not be willing to listen, but many of those who criticize us are wise people, decent ones, and we believe that they might change their minds, or at least become more nuanced in their thinking. We hope that this might help a bit, but it requires us to show restraint, to admit that the damage the IDF is causing in Gaza is extensive. It is something that should trouble us. We should acknowledge the hardships of the occupation. We can’t allow ourselves to present Israel as free of problems. At the same time, we fight for the truth.
Over the last 12 months, you have been very involved in the discussion about the so- called judicial overhaul. You're also perceived outside the academic world as an important voice against these efforts by the current government. I know it's very difficult to make predictions at the moment, but how do you see Israel’s domestic political future and the possibility of a peaceful future for both Israelis and Palestinians after October 7?
It´s very hard to predict. I believe that the judicial overhaul is over. I think the government realized that this is something that we cannot afford, this divide. In terms of relations with the Palestinians, there are two possible paths. I think, in the short term, there might be greater polarization. Those on the left are more convinced of their views, but there is going to be a shift to the right, in the sense that “We can’t trust the Arabs. Palestinians are too dangerous. The only way is to fight them, too. To live next to them, we have to be strong and well armed” — things like that. But I think, in the longer term, three to four years, just as happened with Egypt after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, we might realize, gradually, that we are not strong enough. We can’t afford to continue in a state of war. Even if we are excellent in terms of offense, we are very weak in terms of defense. We cannot defend our borders effectively, and the only way to achieve living here is to strive for peace. Again, it's something that I don't see in the very near future, but it might happen in the longer term. And I hope that the Palestinians will also come to this realization, that they will realize that it is worse for them to be on the side of the Hamas murderers. So it might be that they will be willing to compromise — also in terms of not having an army, at least in the short term. Maybe, I can’t say for sure.
Barak Medina holds the Landecker-Ferencz chair in the study of Protection of Minorities and Vulnerable Groups at the Faculty of Law of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Anne Rethmann is a Visiting PhD Fellow at The Jacob Robinson Institute for the History of Individual and Collective Rights, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
A shorter version of this interview in German was published in the weekly Jungle World on November 30, 2023. The interview was also published online: https://jungle.world/artikel/2023/48/israelische-universitaeten-wir-koennen-es-uns-nicht-leisten-isoliert-zu-sein