I’m a Human Rights Expert. After October 7th, We Need Moral Complexity.

Last week we commemorated the anniversary of that awful day, October 7th, when almost 1,200 human beings lost their lives, setting in motion events that would change the lives of millions more.

As far as debates about the war in Gaza and its context within the Harvard community are concerned — and this includes many pieces published in The Crimson — one thing never ceases to startle 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.

I’d like to make a plea here for recognizing the moral complexity of the situation in and around Gaza. This approach reflects the human rights standpoint, which calls us to recognize and respond to the pain and suffering of all people, and would lead to better campus conversations.

After Germany and the United States, my two countries of citizenship, Israel is where I have spent the most time in my life. I studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a conservative Israeli who lost his oldest son in the first Lebanon war.

So I understand deeply that there is no justification for the unspeakable atrocities committed against Israeli civilians on October 7th. Anybody who slaughters human beings and then posts videos of their deeds makes a choice — an immoral, irredeemable choice that cannot be justified by anything that happened before.

I also understand that the history of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians is long and complex: Hamas’ attack did not come out of nowhere, and Israel’s response has been ruthless.

From the beginning of this crisis, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, which I direct, has 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, because they all matter and require resolution. This approach is not about articulating a dismissive “but.” It’s about saying “this also matters” as we think about how to make some headway.

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, as well as the responsibility of the global community more broadly towards the Jewish people. 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. Because both sides have valid claims to the land, a compromise is necessary. It is a staggering failure of leadership on many sides that after generations of conflict, no workable compromise has been found. All these people deserve the kind of life the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights seeks to guarantee.

Too many people have a moral blind spot vis-a-vis the Palestinians, including many who, like myself, accept a special responsibility towards the Jewish people. Too many think Palestinians should be OK with living barely above subsistence. Like their Jewish neighbors, Palestinians, of course, are entitled to pursue flourishing lives.

Peace won’t come unless they can. 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 states, and also by my two countries of citizenship.

Like the U.S. response after September 11th, Israel’s military campaign shows little promise of making the world safer, especially for the global Jewish population. To kill every member of Hamas or Hezbollah would require causing so much trauma that resurgent violence against Jews around the world would be guaranteed for decades.

In any event, there is no justification for the large-scale attacks on Gaza that have killed more than 42,000 human beings, among them at least 16,000 children, with no end in sight. This assault has driven almost every Gazan out of their home — as if everyone in that densely populated area were equally accountable for Hamas’ atrocities. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, settler violence has reached all-time highs, and hundreds of Palestinians have been killed there since October 7th.

To be sure, international law and just war theory have long acknowledged that justified military responses may involve collateral harm. However, the Israeli government has stretched claims to proportionality (and consideration of the lives of civilians in Gaza) far beyond any plausibility.

Moral complexity requires acknowledging this reality alongside condemnation of the attacks of October 7th. Atrocities do not cancel each other out, and that certain violations occurred earlier does not mean they justify whatever comes later. October 7th does not legitimize the death of 16,000 children.

Moral complexity also applies to our language. Members of the Harvard community have experienced antisemitism and Islamophobia. This is unacceptable and should not be tolerated.

But some treat any criticism of the Israeli government as antisemitic. This definition is unwise because it makes the space for legitimate political opposition, say, to the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu too narrow. Those who ran the concentration camps were antisemitic. Nobody who calls out the Netanyahu government for causing the death of 16,000 children should ipso facto find themselves mentioned in the same breath.

Moreover, positions like Zionism and slogans like “from the river to the sea” mean different things to different people, and legitimately so. We should not assume others mean to say what we consider the worst possible interpretation of those phrases.

Harvard is home to many and is also an institution of public interest. Much of the concern about the climate here has, of course, been sincere. But it also seems that a contingent of people outside — and sometimes inside — Harvard makes statements about campus life that bear little resemblance 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. The University is a complex place people experience in very different ways, depending on which school they belong to, whom they hang out with, and which parts of campus they frequent.

Let me return to the theme of moral complexity one more time. Many awful things have happened at Harvard in the past year (just remember the doxxing trucks). Things many magnitudes more awful have occurred in and around Gaza. And now Israel is under threat from other countries, while 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 – of, in our own small way, furthering the human-rights perspective on this horrible situation.

Mathias Risse is the Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights, Global Affairs and Philosophy and the Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy