����vlog����

Professor Mathias Risse, moral philosopher and Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights, Global Affairs and Philosophy at Harvard Kennedy School, gave an introduction and statement at a Carr Center event held in partnership with the Middle East Initiative on Monday, October 7, 2024, entitled “One Year Later: Israel, Gaza, and the University After October 7.”

In addition to Professor Risse, the event featured Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Senior Fellow; Romy Neumark, Center for Jewish Studies Fellow, Modern Hebrew Language and Media TA; Tarek Masoud, Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Governance; and Yasmeen Abu-Fraiha, Fellow, Middle East Initiative at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; each of whom gave their own statements on the events and consequences of October 7, 2023. Each member of the panel spoke in their own personal capacity, and not as a representative for any center at Harvard Kennedy School, or for the University itself.

Below we share Professor Risse’s opening statement in full, given in his capacity as a professor of moral philosophy and human rights at Harvard Kennedy School. Additionally, at the link below, you may view recording of the panel discussion from Monday.

Statement from Professor Mathias Risse on the First Anniversary of October 7, 2023

It’s been a year since that horrible day when almost 1,200 human beings lost their lives, and events were set in motion that would change the lives of millions. Much like after September 11, 2001, decisions that have been made since then will be with us for decades. Trauma connected to October 7, 2023, and its aftermath is likely to be felt generations from now.

On October 7, unspeakable atrocities were committed against Israeli civilians. About a hundred of those abducted remain unaccounted for. It is beyond imagining what these hostages must have endured, and what those who love them have lived through. There is no justification for this horrifying brutality. Anybody who slaughters human beings this way and then posts videos of their deeds makes a choice—a morally wrong choice that is not reducible to anything that happened before.

It is also true that the history of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians is long and complex: this attack did not come out of nowhere, and Israel’s response to the attack has been ruthless. From the beginning of this crisis, the Carr Center focused its reactions to this new stage in the world’s most visible human rights crisis on the theme of moral complexity. Acknowledging moral complexity requires that we say a number of things side by side, without rank-ordering or qualifying them. We state them side by side because they all matter and require resolution.

As a German, the history of the Holocaust has been ingrained in me since childhood. I accept the special responsibility Germany in particular has towards Israel—which is also a responsibility the global community has towards the Jewish people. I have studied in Israel, and after Germany and the U.S., my two countries of citizenship, Israel is where I have spent most time in my life. Some of my intellectual roots lead to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My academic advisor there was a mathematical economist, by now quite famous, who is on the conversative side of Israeli politics and lost his oldest son in the first Lebanon war in the early 80s.

Israel is the homeland of the Jewish community, and as such holds special significance globally. A commitment to the Jewish people, however, must also always be a commitment to the Palestinian people, since their fates are inextricably intertwined. Millions of Jews live in the area now, as do millions of Palestinians. Both sides have valid accounts as to why that land is their land, and why their children should be allowed to live there. A compromise needs to be reached. It is a staggering failure of leadership on many sides that after generations of conflict no workable compromise has been found. All these people have claims to the kind of life the Universal Declaration of Human Rights seeks to guarantee. 

Too many people have thought Palestinians should be okay with living barely above subsistence level. Much as their Jewish neighbors, Palestinians of course are entitled to pursue flourishing lives. Until they can, we should not expect peace to come, no matter how much military might is deployed. Nobody should be surprised if people revolt if that is the only way to bring meaning to their lives. Palestinians have been abandoned too many times, by wealthy and powerful Arab countries, and by the two countries of which I am a citizen, the United States and Germany.

Israel’s military campaigns show little promise of making the world safer in the long run, especially not for the global Jewish population, the same way U.S. decisions after September 11 did not make the world safer. There is no justification for the large-scale attacks on Gaza that have killed close to 42,000 human beings, among them 14,000 children, with no end in sight, and have driven just about everyone in Gaza out of their homes—as if the whole population of that densely populated area were equally accountable for Hamas’s atrocities. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, settler violence has reached all-time highs, and hundreds of Palestinians have been killed there since October 7, 2023. The Israeli government has stretched beyond plausibility ideas around proportionality in inflicting collateral damage that are familiar from international law and from just war theory. Moral complexity requires acknowledging all of this alongside condemnation of the attacks of October 7. Atrocities do not cancel each other out, and that certain violations occurred earlier does not mean they justify whatever comes later.

On campuses around the world, including our own, October 7 has had enormous repercussions. Many members of our community have close ties to the crisis. For many others, October 7 triggered a political awakening—including reflection on just how they wanted to connect judgment on who is oppressing or threatening whom in the Middle East to other scenarios. It is stunning to recall from the week of October 9 just how quickly events unfolded: how quickly some blamed all responsibility on Israel; how quickly others demanded the release of the names of those who took this stance; how quickly a whole slew of names more or less loosely related to this stance appeared on websites blacklisting them, and how quickly the doxxing trucks started circling Harvard Square. One could hardly miss how initially these trucks focused on female students wearing headscarves, naming and pillorying them as Harvard’s leading Antisemites. Nobody deserved to be on those doxxing trucks. I hope those who sent or cheered them on feel a profound sense of shame.

Members of our community across Harvard have experienced anti-Semitism or anti-Muslim sentiment. This is unacceptable and should not be tolerated. Harvard is home to many and is also an institution of public interest. Much of the concern about the climate here was sincere. But it also seemed that a contingent of people from outside—and sometimes from inside—of Harvard just wanted to be seen making statements about campus life that bore little semblance to reality. And I find it hard to assess what truth conditions for statements like “Harvard as such is antisemitic” or “anti-Muslim” would even be. Also, from all I can tell, the university takes seriously the accusations of a campus climate that feels unsafe for both Jewish and Muslim communities. I hope that this is visible beyond our walls.

As far as debates about the Gaza war and its context are concerned, it often surprises me how people of great intelligence and understanding of the situation still end up articulating a one-sided story that does little more than pay lip-service to the other side, if that. Again, I return to the theme of moral complexity. Many awful things have happened at Harvard in the past year. Even more awful things have occurred in and around Gaza—and obviously we are talking about magnitudes of difference. Now Israel is under threat from other countries, and at the same time millions in Lebanon have reason to fear they will be held accountable for Hezbollah the way Gazans have been for Hamas. These realities all need to be named and placed next to each other. They do not cancel each other out. The way forward is to acknowledge the full humanity of all people in this conflict, and to see that they have claims to dignity and a flourishing life. I hope we can all find ways, no matter how limited, of contributing to this cause—which I think is one rather minimal way of articulating the human-rights perspective on this situation.