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Israel Must Make Its Nuclear Intentions Clear in Order to Stay Safe in an Escalating Middle East
Israel’s nuclear reactor near Dimona. Photo: Wikicommons
Recent events in Syria underscore the changing geo-strategic landscape in the Middle East. For Israel, although the fall of Assad will likely weaken Iran, it won’t necessarily reduce the risk of a nuclear war in the region. In fact, there is apt to take place a strengthening of certain Sunni sub-state jihadist elements, a development that could prove “force-multiplying” with a non-nuclear Turkey and/or an already-nuclear non-Arab Pakistan. Plausible “wild cards” in this opaque mix would be an increasingly desperate pre-nuclear Iran and an expectedly perplexed non-nuclear Saudi Arabia. Also to be factored in should be the unpredictable element of already-nuclear Iranian ally North Korea and its potentially critical connections to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In essence, even a newly-weakened and still pre-nuclear Iran could pose existential hazards to Israel by means of North Korean military surrogates.
Israel’s nuclear weapons and its nuclear doctrine should ensure national survival. In the early 1950s, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, already understood the need for a conspicuous “equalizer” to secure an otherwise too-vulnerable Jewish State.
Early on, the “old man” had recognized that in the absence of task-appropriate nuclear assets, Israel could sometime lose every tangible chance to simply endure.
Still, no category of weapons, even nuclear ordnance, is meaningful on its own All weapon systems need to be informed by suitable strategy and tactics. How should these special Israeli assets be “used?”
Back in the early days, when Americans and the Soviets were first defining a bipolar Cold War nuclear strategy ex nihilo, Israel had nowhere to turn for a template of useful nuclear guidance. What Jerusalem did understand, from the start, is that nuclear ordnance can succeed only through non-use.
This seeming paradox has prominent conceptual origins in Sun Tzu’s ancient dictum from The Art of War: “Subjugating the enemy’s army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence.” In brief, deterrence, whether ancient or contemporary, “works” to the extent that prospective aggressors could calculate that the expected costs of striking first would exceed expected gains.
To work, designated adversaries must be considered rational nation-states. Sometimes, these states could operate in tandem with other states (an alliance) or with assorted terror groups (hybrid). In the future, Israel’s enemies could include sub-state nuclear foes acting by themselves, such as Hezbollah, after it had become the recipient of reassuring nuclear largesse from Iran or even North Korea.
For now, at least, Israel has no current nuclear enemies, unless one were to consider Pakistan.
Despite a common enemy in Israel, the conflict between radical Shiite and Sunni forces continues across the region. For all sides, the aim of this conflict is “escalation dominance” during episodes of competitive risk-taking. Over time, such escalations by Iran could include nuclear warheads, not against insurgent targets, but against a formidable Arab state such as Saudi Arabia.
As a literal matter of survival, Israel should be intellectually creative and conceptually well-prepared. For deterrence to work long-term, Iran and its proxies would need to be told more rather than less about (1) Israel’s nuclear targeting doctrine; and (2) the expected invulnerability and penetration-capability of Israel’s nuclear forces.
However counter-intuitive, this means that to best prepare for all plausible attack scenarios, Israel should plan conscientiously for the incremental replacement of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” with apt levels of “selective nuclear disclosure.” In common parlance, it will soon be time for Jerusalem to remove Israel’s bomb from the “basement.”
For Israel, the only continuously true purpose of nuclear weapons should be deterrence ex ante, not revenge ex post. Nonetheless, there would inevitably remain diverse circumstances under which Israeli nuclear deterrence could fail.
How might such fearful circumstances arise? Four principal though not mutually exclusive scenarios now warrant both mention and examination. Israel’s strategic planners should study these paradigmatic narratives closely, and prepare to deal effectively with any and all of them, singly and in potentially synergistic interactions.
Taken together with the four basic scenarios outlined below, these “parallel” narratives could help provide Israel with needed intellectual armaments to prevent “the worst.” Presently, though Israel need not worry about any existing regional nuclear adversary, state or sub-state, it’s nuclear weapons and doctrine could still represent an indispensable “ultimate” deterrent against forms of massive conventional/biological/chemical attack.
(1) Nuclear Retaliation
Should Iran or an alliance of enemy states ever launch a nuclear first-strike against Israel (in principle, this could include North Korea), Jerusalem would respond to the extent possible with a nuclear retaliatory strike. If enemy first-strikes were to involve other available forms of unconventional weapons, such as chemical, biological or EMP (electromagnetic pulse) weapons, Israel might still launch a “limited” nuclear reprisal. This decision would depend, in large measure, on Jerusalem’s informed expectations of follow-on enemy aggression and its comparative calculations of damage-limitation.
If Israel were to absorb a massively disruptive non-nuclear attack, a nuclear retaliation could not automatically be ruled out, especially if: (a) the state aggressors were perceived to hold nuclear and/or other unconventional weapons in reserve; and/or (b) Israel’s leaders were to believe that non-nuclear retaliations could not prevent annihilation of the Jewish State. A nuclear retaliation by Israel could be ruled out only in those rapidly discernible circumstances where enemy state aggressions were clearly conventional, “typical” (that is, consistent with all previous instances of attack, in degree and intent), and hard-target oriented (that is, directed towards Israeli weapons and related military infrastructures, rather than civilian populations).
(2) Nuclear Counter retaliation
Should Israel ever feel compelled to preempt enemy state aggression with conventional weapons, the target state(s)’ response would largely determine Jerusalem’s next moves. If this response were in any way nuclear, Israel would doubtlessly turn to some available form of nuclear counter retaliation.
If this retaliation were to involve other non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction, Israel could also feel pressed to take the escalatory initiative. Again, this decision would depend upon Jerusalem’s judgments of enemy intent and on its corollary calculations of damage-limitation.
Should the enemy state response to Israel’s preemption be limited to hard-target conventional strikes, it is unlikely that the Jewish State would then move to any nuclear counter retaliations. If, however, the enemy conventional retaliation was “all-out” and directed toward Israeli civilian populations as well as Israeli military targets, an Israeli nuclear counter retaliation could not be excluded. Such a counter retaliation could be ruled out only if the enemy state’s conventional retaliation were identifiably proportionate to Israel’s preemption; confined to Israeli military targets; circumscribed by the legal limits of “military necessity”; and accompanied by certain explicit and verifiable assurances of non-escalatory intent.
(3) Nuclear Preemption
It is highly implausible that Israel would ever decide to launch a preemptive nuclear strike. Although circumstances could arise wherein such a strike would be rational and permissible under authoritative international law, it is unlikely that Israel would allow itself to reach such irremediably dire circumstances. Unless the nuclear weapons involved were usable in a fashion still consistent with the longstanding laws of war, this most extreme form of preemption could represent an expressly egregious violation of humanitarian international law.
Even if such consistency were possible, the psychological/political impact on the entire world community would be strongly negative and significantly far-reaching. This means that an Israeli nuclear preemption could conceivably be expected only: (a) where Israel’s pertinent state enemies had acquired nuclear and/or other weapons of mass destruction judged capable of annihilating the Jewish State; (b) where these enemies had made it clear that their intentions paralleled their genocidal capabilities; (c) where these enemies were believed ready to begin an operational “countdown to launch;” and (d) where Jerusalem believed that Israeli non-nuclear preemptions could not achieve the needed minimum levels of damage-limitation — that is, levels consistent with physical preservation of the Jewish State.
(4) Nuclear War fighting
Should nuclear weapons ever be introduced into any actual conflict between Israel and its enemies, either by Israel or a regional foe, nuclear war fighting, at one level or another, could ensue. This would hold true so long as: (a) enemy first-strikes would not destroy Israel’s second-strike nuclear capability; (b) enemy retaliations for an Israeli conventional preemption would not destroy the Jewish State’s nuclear counter retaliatory capability; (c) Israeli preemptive strikes involving nuclear weapons would not destroy enemy state second-strike nuclear capabilities; and (d) Israeli retaliation for conventional first-strikes would not destroy the enemy’s nuclear counter retaliatory capability.
In order to satisfy its most indispensable survival imperatives, Israel must take appropriate steps to ensure the likelihood of (a) and (b) above, and the simultaneous unlikelihood of (c) and (d).
Even in the midst of “only” a conventional war with Iran, Israel could sometime decide that the expectations of “escalation dominance” had become overwhelming and that escalation to nuclear combat would be the sole rational option.
A compelling example could involve an Iranian non-nuclear missile attack upon Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor, Iranian resort to radiation-dispersal weapons (dirty bombs), and/or Pyongyang’s combat involvement on behalf of Iran.
All these scenarios pose more-or-less indecipherable hazards for Jerusalem, including manifestly unknown prospects of enemy irrationality. Writing in broadly philosophical terms, philosopher Karl Jaspers observed: “The rational is not thinkable without its other, the non-rational, and it never appears in reality without it.”
Understood in more narrowly military or strategic terms, Jaspers wisdom suggests that appearances may deceive and an apparently rational foe in Tehran could turn in extremis to non-rational decision-making.
The opposite is also worrisome. Accordingly, for Israel, a presumptively irrational adversary in Iran could unexpectedly turn to rational decision-making, a policy tilt that would at first seem welcome but quickly become dissembling. In tangible essence, this tilt could create unmanageable levels of “cognitive dissonance” for strategic planners in Jerusalem.
For Jerusalem, in daring to face prospects of a nuclear war, candor matters. In all matters of national security strategy, just as in all matters of law and jurisprudence, truth will be exculpatory. Going forward in an unprecedented strategic universe, Israel will need to combine deeply theoretical examinations with tangibly pragmatic policies. Ironically, even its most plainly threatening nuclear weapons could prove useless or self-defeating unless there had first been suitable advance planning for virtually every imaginable WMD war scenario.
For Israel, national survival must always be about what ancient Greeks and Macedonians defined as a struggle of “mind over mind.” Even in a steadily nuclearizing world, the true contest is never just about “mind over matter.” In the end, if all goes well for Israel, there will have been meticulous considerations of enemy rationality and correspondingly calibrated shifts from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.” Without such multi-layered antecedents, a catastrophic conflict, whether operationally nuclear or “merely” conventional, could become unavoidable.
For the Jewish State, mentored by history, Swiss playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt’s warning should be unchallengeable: “The worst does sometimes happen.” It should be taken most seriously by Jerusalem with reference to nuclear war avoidance. No strategic imperative could be more obvious.
Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books, monographs, and scholarly articles dealing with military nuclear strategy. In Israel, he was Chair of Project Daniel. Over recent years, he has published on nuclear warfare issues in Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs; The Atlantic; Israel Defense; Jewish Website; The New York Times; Israel National News; The Jerusalem Post; The Hill; and other sites.
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Police Officers Injured as Violent Clashes Erupt at Anti-Israel Nakba Day Rally in Berlin
A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator speaks to a police officer during a protest against Israel to mark the 77th anniversary of the “Nakba,” or catastrophe, in Berlin, Germany, May 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Axel Schmidt
Anti-Israel demonstrators clashed violently with Berlin police officers during a march on Thursday, resulting in injuries and heightened tensions throughout the German capital city.
More than 600 police officers were dispatched to contain the “Nakba Day” protest in Berlin’s central Kreuzberg district, where over 50 arrests were made. The demonstrators were recognizing the 77th anniversary of the “nakba,” the Arabic term for “catastrophe” used by Palestinians and anti-Israel activists to refer to the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
According to local law enforcement, approximately 1,100 people took part in the pro-Hamas rally, which also protested against Israel’s military campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group in the Gaza Strip.
Demonstrators initially intended to march from Südstern Square in the southern part of the capital to the adjacent Neukölln district, but local authorities only allowed the protest to remain stationary.
Even though a local court had ruled that the anti-Israel protest couldn’t move through the city, demonstrators repeatedly attempted to march through the neighborhood. When police intervened to stop them, they were met with insults and violent attacks from the crowd.
Police officers stand guard in front of Pro-Palestinian demonstrators during a protest against Israel to mark the 77th anniversary of the “Nakba” or catastrophe, in Berlin, Germany, May 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Axel Schmidt
During the protest, one of the organizers addressed the crowd, declaring, “The nakba is a continuing campaign of ethnic cleansing that has never stopped.”
The demonstration was also marked by antisemitic rhetoric and inflammatory chants, including accusations that the Israeli government and military are “child murderers, women murderers, baby murderers,” as well as the use of the banned slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The slogan is popular among anti-Israel activists and has been widely interpreted as a call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
When police intervened to stop the inflammatory rhetoric, they were met with significant violence from the crowd, who reportedly threw bottles, stones, and other objects, and sprayed officers with red paint.
After the incidents, police reported that one officer was pulled into the crowd, forced to the ground, and trampled until he lost consciousness. The 36-year-old officer sustained severe upper body injuries, including a broken arm, and remains hospitalized.
“The attack on a police officer at the demonstration in Kreuzberg is nothing but a cowardly, brutal act of violence,” Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner said in a statement. “Attacks against officers are attacks on law and order and therefore against all of us.”
“Those who misuse the right to demonstrate to spread hate, antisemitic incitement, or violence will face the full force of the law,” the German leader added.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators during a protest against Israel to mark the 77th anniversary of the “Nakba” or catastrophe, in Berlin, Germany, May 15, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
Local authorities reported that 11 officers and an unspecified number of protesters were injured during the incidents, with the injured demonstrators receiving treatment from the Berlin fire department.
The German-Israeli Society (DIG) condemned the violence and hateful rhetoric, urging authorities to reconsider granting permission for such demonstrations.
“Often, these events are not demonstrations for the rights and the legitimate concerns of Palestinians but merely express outright hatred of Israel,” the group said in a statement.
Germany has experienced a sharp spike in antisemitism amid the war in Gaza. In just the first six months of 2024 alone, the number of antisemitic incidents in Berlin surpassed the total for all of the prior year and reached the highest annual count on record, according to Germany’s Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS).
The figures compiled by RIAS were the highest count for a single year since the federally-funded body began monitoring antisemitic incidents in 2015, showing the German capital averaged nearly eight anti-Jewish outrages a day from January to June last year.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), police registered 5,154 antisemitic incidents in Germany in 2023, a 95 percent increase compared to the previous year.
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Trump Signals Support for Future Iran Trade Deal if Regime Dismantles Nuclear Program
US President Donald speaking in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC on March 3, 2025. Photo: Leah Millis via Reuters Connect
US President Donald Trump on Thursday seemed to signal openness to striking a trade deal with Iran if the Islamist theocracy agrees to dismantle its entire nuclear program.
“Iran wants to trade with us. Okay? If you can believe that. And I’m okay with it. I’m using trade to settle scores and to make peace,” Trump said while speaking to Fox News anchor Bret Baier. “But I’ve told Iran, ‘We make a deal, you’re gonna be really happy.”
However, Trump underscored the urgency in finalizing a nuclear deal with Iran, saying there’s “not plenty of time” to secure an agreement which would dismantle Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.
“There’s not plenty of time. You feel urgency? Well, they’re not gonna have a nuclear weapon. And eventually, they’ll have a nuclear weapon, and then the discussion becomes a much different one,” Trump said.
The US and other Western countries say Iran’s nuclear program is ultimately meant to build nuclear weapons — a claim denied by Tehran, which asserts the program is only geared for peaceful nuclear energy.
Trump on Friday said Iran had a US proposal about its nuclear program and knows it needs to move quickly to resolve the dispute.
“They have a proposal. More importantly, they know they have to move quickly or something bad — something bad’s going to happen,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, according to an audio recording of the remarks.
However, Tehran denied receiving a US proposal yet. According to some reports, Oman, which has been mediating US-Iran nuclear talks in recent weeks, has the proposal and will soon give to the Iranians.
US lawmakers and some Trump administration officials have repeatedly stressed the importance of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, arguing that Tehran could use a nuclear bomb to permanently entrench its regime and potentially launch a strike at Israel. Some experts also fear Iran could eventually use its expanding ballistic missile program to launch a nuclear warhead at the US.
However, the administration has sent conflicting messages regarding its ongoing nuclear talks with Iran, oscillating between demands for “complete dismantlement” of Tehran’s nuclear program and signaling support for allowing a limited degree of uranium enrichment for “civilian purposes.” Many Republicans and hawkish foreign policy analysts have lamented what they described as similarities between the framework of the Trump administration’s negotiations with Iran and the controversial Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a 2015 deal negotiated by the former Obama administration which placed temporary restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of major international sanctions. Trump withdrew the US from the deal during his first term, arguing its terms were bad for American national security.
Trump indicated last Wednesday during a radio interview that he is seeking to “blow up” Iran’s nuclear centrifuges “nicely” through an agreement with Tehran but is also prepared to do so “viciously” in an attack if necessary. That same day, however, when asked by a reporter in the White House whether his administration would allow Iran to maintain an enrichment program as long as it doesn’t enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, Trump said his team had not decided.
Furthermore, US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff drew backlash last month when, during a Fox News interview, he suggested that Iran would be allowed to pursue a nuclear program for so-called civilian purposes, saying that Iran “does not need to enrich past 3.67 percent.” The next day, Witkoff backtracked on these remarks, writing on X/Twitter that Tehran must “stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program.”
Iran has claimed that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes rather than building weapons. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, reported last year that Iran had greatly accelerated uranium enrichment to close to weapons grade at its Fordow site dug into a mountain.
The UK, France, and Germany said in a statement at the time that there is no “credible civilian justification” for Iran’s recent nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”
While speaking to Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim al-Thani on Wednesday, Trump reportedly said that he would like to avoid war with Iran, “because things like that get started and they get out of control. I’ve seen it over and over again … we’re not going to let that happen.”
Trump has threatened Iran with military action and more sanctions if the regime does not agree to a nuclear deal with Washington.
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Harvard, Jewish Activist ‘Shabbos’ Kestenbaum Settle Antisemitism Lawsuit
Alexander “Shabbos” Kestenbaum makes remarks during the fourth annual Countering Antisemitism Summit at the Four Seasons, Feb. 26, 2025. Photo: USA Today Network via Reuters Connect.
Harvard University and Alexander “Shabbos” Kestenbaum have settled a lawsuit in which the former student turned widely known pro-Israel activist accused the institution of violating the US Civil Rights Act of 1964 by permitting antisemitic discrimination and harassment.
The confidential agreement ends what Kestenbaum, an Orthodox Jews, had promised would be a protracted, scorched-earth legal battle revealing alleged malfeasance at the highest levels of Harvard’s administration. So determined was Kestenbaum to discomfit the storied institution and force it to enact long overdue reforms that he declined to participate in an earlier settlement it reached last year with a group of Jewish plaintiffs, of which he was a member, who sued the university in 2024.
Charging ahead, Kestenbaum vowed never to settle and proclaimed that the discovery phase of the case would be so damning to Harvard’s defense that no judge or jury would render a verdict in its favor. Harvard turned that logic against him, requesting a trove of documents containing his communications with advocacy groups, politicians, and US President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign staff during a period of time which saw Kestenbaum’s star rise to meteoric heights as he became a national poster-child for pro-Israel activism.
Harvard argued that the materials are “relevant to his allegations that he experienced harassment and discrimination to which Harvard was deliberately indifferent in violation of Title VI.” Additionally, it sought information related to other groups which have raised awareness of the antisemitism crisis since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, demanding to know, the Harvard Crimson reported, “the ownership, funding, financial backing, management, and structure” of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Students Against Antisemitism (SAA), and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education (JAFE).
Without the materials, Harvard claimed, it would be unable to depose witnesses.
According to the Crimson, the university and Kestenbaum failed to agree on a timeframe for producing the requested documents, prompting it to file in May a motion that would have extracted them via court order. Meanwhile, two anonymous plaintiffs who also declined to be a party to 2024’s settlement came forward to join Kestenbaum’s complaint, which necessitated its being amended at the approval of the judge presiding over the case, Richard Stearns. In filing the motion to modify the suit, the Crimson reported, Kestenbaum’s attorneys asked Stearns to “extend the discovery deadline by at least six months” in the event that he “rejects the motion.”
On April 2, Stearns — who was appointed to the bench in 1993 by former US President Bill Clinton (D) and served as a political operative for and special assistant to Israel critic and former Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern — spurned the amended complaint and granted Harvard its discovery motion, which Kestenbaum’s attorneys had opposed in part by arguing that Harvard too had withheld key documents. Kestenbaum was given five days to submit the contents of correspondence.
On Wednesday, both parties lauded the settlement — which, according to the Crimson, included dismissing Kestenbaum’s case with prejudice — as a step toward eradicating antisemitism at Harvard University, an issue that has cost it billions of dollars in federal funding and undermined its reputation for being a beacon of enlightenment and the standard against which all other higher education institutions are judged.
“Harvard and Mr. Kestenbaum acknowledge each other’s steadfast and important efforts to combat antisemitism at Harvard and elsewhere,” Harvard University spokesman Jason Newton said in a statement.
In a lengthy statement of his own, Kestenbaum expressed gratitude for having helped “lead the student effort combating antisemitism” while accusing Harvard of resorting to duplicitous and intrusive tactics to fend off his allegations.
“Harvard opposed the anonymity of two of its current Jewish students who sought to vindicate their legal rights, and the Harvard Crimson outed them, even before the court could rule on their motion for anonymity. Harvard also issued a 999-page subpoena against Aish Hatorah, my Yeshiva in Israel that has been deeply critical of the university,” he said. “Remarkably, while Harvard sought personal and non-relevant documents between me and my friends, family, and others in the Jewish community, they simultaneously refused to produce virtually any relevant, internal communication that we had asked for during discovery.”
He continued, “I am comforted knowing that as we have now resoled our lawsuit, the Trump administration will carry the baton forward.”
Harvard’s legal troubles continue.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the university sued the Trump administration in April to request an injunction that would halt the government’s impounding of $2.26 billion of its federal grants and contracts and an additional $450 billion that was confiscated earlier this week.
In the complaint, shared by interim university president Alan Garber, Harvard says the Trump administration bypassed key procedural steps it must, by law, take before sequestering any federal funds. It also charges that the Trump administration does not aim, as it has publicly pledged, to combat campus antisemitism at Harvard but to impose “viewpoint-based conditions on Harvard’s funding.”
The administration has proposed that Harvard reform in ways that conservatives have long argued will make higher education more meritocratic and less welcoming to anti-Zionists and far-left extremists. Its “demands,” contained in a letter the administration sent to Garber — who subsequently released it to the public — called for “viewpoint diversity in hiring and admissions,” the “discontinuation of [diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives],” and “reducing forms of governance bloat.” They also implore Harvard to begin “reforming programs with egregious records of antisemitism” and to recalibrate its approach to “student discipline.”
Harvard rejects the Trump administration’s coupling of campus antisemitism with longstanding grievances regarding elite higher education’s alleged “wokeness,” elitism, and overwhelming bias against conservative ideas. Republican lawmakers, for their part, have maintained that it is futile to address campus antisemitism while ignoring the context in which it emerged.
On April 28, a Massachusetts district court judge, appointed to the bench by former US President Barack Obama, granted Harvard its request for the speedy processing of its case and a summary judgement in lieu of a trial, scheduling a hearing for July 21.
The following day, Harvard released its long anticipated report on campus antisemitism and along with it an apology from Garber which acknowledged that school officials failed in key ways to address the hatred to which Jewish students were subjected following the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre
The over 300-page document provided a complete account of antisemitic incidents which transpired on Harvard’s campus in recent years — from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee’s (PSC) endorsement of the Oct. 7 terrorist atrocities to an anti-Zionist faculty group’s sharing an antisemitic cartoon which depicted Jews as murderers of people of color — and said that one source of the problem is the institution’s past refusal to afford Jews the same protections against discrimination enjoyed by other minority groups. It also issued recommendations for improving Jewish life on campus going forward.
“I am sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community. The grave, extensive impact of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas assault on Israel and its aftermath had serious repercussions on campus,” Garber said in a statement accompanying the report. “Harvard cannot — and will not — abide bigotry. We will continue to provide for the safety and security of all members of our community and safeguard their freedom from harassment. We will redouble our efforts to ensure that the university is a place where ideas are welcomed, entertained, and contested in the spirt of seeking truth; where argument proceeds without sacrificing dignity; and where mutual respect is the norm.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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