“The horizon of peace”

In some ways, everything changed on October 7. The 1,200 people killed on that day by Hamas, and the over 100 Israeli hostages killed since, are no longer walking this earth. That is 1,300 suns, with entire worlds that orbited around them, that no longer exist. And the over 40,000 (and counting) Palestinians killed by the Israeli onslaught on Gaza in the year since are even more human galaxies destroyed with bone-crushing and heart-stopping force. As we gauge the impact of these last months, we must never lose sight of the human faces, the flesh-and-bone-and-blood-and-soul lives, that once were, but no longer are, breathing the air we share. 

In other ways, however, nothing changed on October 7. The violence birthed from injustice and fear that have defined the inability to secure the future of Palestine and Israel over the last several decades became more visible, yes, and even more widespread, but it is not something entirely new or unexpected. Experts have long said that without a lasting, just peace in which all Palestinians and Israelis are able to live free, we would one day see mass violence erupt to imperil the future. They were right. The horizon of peace and safety for all seems farther away than it has in my lifetime.

James W. McCarty
Clinical assistant professor of religion and conflict transformation and director of the Tom Porter Religion and Conflict Transformation Program, School of Theology

“A new generation of peacemakers”

I am the director of BU’s Institute on Culture, Religion & World Affairs (CURA). CURA is one of BU’s oldest research centers, and like the attacks on September 11, 2001, October 7 supercharged our mission to educate the public about religion, culture, and international affairs. Bigotry is always a handmaiden to violence, and we expected that the months afterward would see an increase in Islamophobia and antisemitism. Terrorism is destabilizing by design, and we knew that policymakers were unlikely to respond rationally. So our mission didn’t change: we’ve been working overtime to educate the BU community about religion and conflict, convene campus conversations about Israel and Palestine, and advocate publicly in the hopes that Israeli and American policymakers would avoid the mistakes that the United States government made in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have utterly failed in that latter task. 

What has changed is personal. I am Jewish, and large parts of the American Jewish community are vocal supporters of the Israeli government even while the world’s leading human rights organizations have credibly accused Israel of wanton destruction in Gaza, including collective punishment and starvation as weapons of war. The International Court of Justice has even found it plausible that Israel’s actions amount to genocide. So while CURA’s mission remains the same, I have expanded the institute’s focus beyond countries like Indonesia and Rwanda in order to combat religious nationalism and militarism at home.

And as a result, I am cautiously optimistic for the future. Last spring CURA organized an international conference on the Jewish left, supporting the many scholars and organizations calling for human rights, democracy, and freedom for all people in Israel and Palestine regardless of race, religion, or nationality. Paradoxically, then, one change in the world is that October 7 gave birth to a new generation of peacemakers. 

Jeremy Menchik
Associate professor of international relations and of political science and director of the Institute on Culture, Religion & World Affairs, Pardee School of Global Studies

“A new era in post–Cold War politics”

After the recent deaths of Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah in an air strike in Beirut and Hamas political bureau chairman Ismail Haniyeh in an assassination in Tehran, it is clearer than ever that this war probes political territory far beyond the obvious issue of Israel and Palestine. The fact of the larger regional Israel-Iran proxy conflict and the close relationship between allies Israel and the United States may be readily apparent. However, another crucial relationship to consider is the close alliance between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Russia. The deepening relations between Tehran and Moscow are evidenced at least in part by the continuous money and arms flow between the two nations. Recent reporting from Hindustan Times and Reuters indicates a new weapons flow between Russia and the Houthis, an Iran-backed organization based in Yemen, mediated by the Islamic Republic. These various relationships raise the question, one year after October 7, of whether the Israel-Hamas war represents a new era in post–Cold War politics, where allies of the United States and Russia will continue to fight proxy wars reminiscent of Korea and Vietnam as a part of a larger ideological battle between democracy and authoritarianism. As the Israel-Hamas war continues, it is essential to examine the war with the broader geopolitical lens of intersecting conflicts across the globe, understanding that now, more than ever, no war can be viewed in isolation.

Katie Harmon (Pardee’25)

“This isn’t just a moment; it’s a movement”

It has now been a year since the events of October 7, and over the past year we have seen a powerful awakening, especially by the youth. Our current generation has often been criticized for being politically detached, yet I see college campuses that have transformed into powerful epicenters of political activism and social consciousness, not just in the United States, but around the world. This signifies a generational shift.

The young people of our world have sent a clear message to our leaders. We see you and what you are doing…and it’s not good enough. We are here, we demand more action, and we stand for peace and justice for all oppressed communities. This revolution of both mind and spirit has been nothing short of extraordinary. Every day I see students selflessly and fearlessly stepping onto the front lines, wielding not only their voices, but also their hearts. By organizing rallies, leading discussions, and staging sit-ins, students today are driven by an urgent call to action that transcends borders and backgrounds. This surge reflects a profound recognition that the issues we face are interconnected, and that silence in the face of shared suffering is not an option.

This isn’t just a moment; it’s a movement—one that resonates deeply with the moral imperative to stand up for human rights, justice, and compassion in an increasingly chaotic world.

Faizaan Alimohamed (Pardee’25)

“Terrorists play jujitsu”

For me, what is most troubling is the way the Israeli government fell into the trap laid by Hamas. It was an effective trap: on a per capita basis, the assault was more than 10 times the scale of 9/11, with the perpetrators hiding in tunnels under civilian infrastructure very nearby. It’s easy to understand the impulse to retaliate—even if retribution will predictably make things worse. After 9/11, the United States initiated a war in Iraq that led to the deaths of some 200,000 civilians and also gave rise to ISIS—an even more brutal and dangerous enemy than the perpetrator we were trying to destroy. But it’s important to remember that terrorists play jujitsu—they want to provoke the enemy into harming itself. In this regard, Hamas succeeded. Hamas personnel have repeatedly admitted that the goal was to provoke an extreme retaliatory response, even at the expense of tens of thousands—even 100,000—Palestinian lives. We’ve never seen a terrorist group that was so willing to sacrifice the civilians whose interests it claims to represent. Like many terrorist groups, Hamas’ true goal is to ensure its own survival, not to improve the lives of Palestinians. But with its indiscriminate response, the extremist Israeli government has deeply harmed its international standing and its relationship with the United States. 

Jessica Stern
Research professor, Pardee School of Global Studies. Stern’s work focuses on perpetrators of violence and the possible connections between trauma and terror.

“Released from the shadows”

What has changed since October 7, 2023? Everything and nothing. I remember 10/7 like it was yesterday. My best friends from my gap year in Israel were staying at my house when we heard the news.

The biggest massacre of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust. We were frozen. Our homeland, our friends, and our families were under attack for a simple reason: we are Jewish. October 7 reminded the Jewish people in Israel and the diaspora that history repeats itself and we will forever be targeted.

October 7 did not create antisemitism on our campus, but it allowed it to be released from the shadows, only to be masked as anti-Israel criticism. Jewish students walk around our campus fearing for their safety: emotionally, physically, and educationally. Jewish students have to denounce their Zionism to fit into campus life at BU.

There is an onus on every Jewish student to be able to defend their Judaism and the State of Israel’s actions. However, like any other minority group, we are not a monolith of opinion, yet Jews are generalized to one perspective.

With the largest Jewish population of any private institution in the country, according to Hillel International, BU has a responsibility to protect Jewish members of the community, and it has failed. Jews are not welcomed into all spaces, not supported as a minority community, and not being heard.

The Jewish people are burdened and blessed to remember who we are and where we come from. We learn about the expulsion of our people from Spain in 1492. We learn about the horrors of the Holocaust. We lived through the first and second Intifada. We will remember the victims of October 7, 2023.

But in each of these stories the community binds together and rises up. We are blessed to have the foundation to succeed where we can write the next chapter of our history. We are fighting for our rights on campus and combating hatred.

The goal of October 7, 2023, was to destroy the Jewish community, but it will only make us stronger. 

Shayna Dash (Wheelock’26)
BU Students for Israel

“Upending norms”

All conflicts lead to human displacement. If I were to reflect on any other global conflict one year later, I would discuss the volume of cross-border refugee flows, main migratory routes, and largest host countries for refugees. I cannot do that in the case of Gaza because Israel established a clear policy as it besieged and bombarded the strip after the Hamas attack on October 7: no exit. It sealed all border crossings to encage civilians as it cut off food, water, electricity, and fuel and unleashed one of the most destructive aerial campaigns in recent history that has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, including over 16,500 children. Israel’s unrelenting bombing and evacuation orders have rendered 90 percent of Gazans internally displaced—often 9 to 10 times—with no prospects of safe passage outside of the strip or safe refuge within it.

This no exit policy has been the most difficult for me to witness, accept, and explain as an expert of forced migration. As researchers in this field, we are often critical of how refugees are treated by host countries or the limitations of the international human rights framework. But we often take for granted one of the most basic rights—the right to flee—and over the past year we have witnessed the carnage that ensues when occupying powers who control all border crossings refuse to grant civilians that basic right.

In addition to upending norms around the right to flee, a second striking development over the past year has been the sheer scale and speed by which Israel has violated international laws and targeted places protected under the laws of war. It has killed more children in Gaza in the first four months than have been killed in all conflicts globally over the past four years; killed more humanitarian workers in Gaza than in any other conflict globally; it has targeted hospitals, ambulances, schools, refugee camps, and designated safe zones. It has imprisoned over 9,000 Palestinians—including children—without due process, many of whom have been subjected to torture, including gang rape.

The third striking development over the past year has been how remarkably unconstrained the Israeli government has been in pursuing these violations. There have been some attempts by international institutions to hold Israel accountable—such as extensive evidence of genocide documented by legal experts, including some of our own faculty, a determination by the International Court of Justice that Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza, a separate determination that Israel is an apartheid state in the occupied territories, and International Criminal Court arrest warrants to prosecute its heads of state for committing war crimes. But the United States and other Western states that position themselves as the bastions the rule-based international order continue to supply an endless stream of weapons to support Israel militarily, economically, and diplomatically in contravention of international laws and their own domestic laws.

As a result, one year later, and there is still no exit from Gaza. Not for Palestinian civilians, nor the Israeli hostages whose prospects for freedom have dwindled alongside the prospects of a ceasefire. Instead, we have the beginnings of a much larger regional war as Israel has expanded its military incursions into the West Bank and Lebanon, killing over 1,400 people in Lebanon at the time of writing. The unfettered nature of Israel’s assault on civilians across multiple frontlines is setting a dangerous precedent for the laws of proportionality and the targeting of civilians across the globe.

Noora Lori
Associate professor of international relations, Pardee School of Global Studies

“The age of terrorism is not over”

The Israeli military’s failure to properly anticipate the October 7 attacks and its continued inability to achieve total victory in Gaza stems largely from its lack of penetration of Hamas communication networks. Though the exact shape of those networks remains unknown, they likely involve a system of couriers, lower-tech devices (such as the compromised pagers employed by Hezbollah), and tunnels that Israeli agents have apparently been unable to sufficiently infiltrate. The continued survival of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader, in Gaza serves as the best evidence of that intelligence gap. That lack of precise knowledge about the location of Hamas’ leadership and military capabilities has resulted in a leveling of Gaza and massive civilian casualties, an outcome largely fulfilling Hamas’ objective of isolating Israel on the international stage. The success of low-tech communication systems against technologically advanced militaries and intelligence agencies demonstrated in Gaza could provide an effective model for other insurgent groups and terrorist organizations also facing down asymmetric conflict. While the immediate impact of that modeling may be difficult to precisely assess, the broad development remains starkly clear: the age of terrorism is not over and groups will continue to evolve and integrate new technologies and strategies to exploit complacency.

Jack Martin (Pardee’25)

“Protections are being discarded”

While international human rights law has always been met with skepticism, since October 7 there is serious question about its relevance at all in addressing violent conflicts. We are watching the devastating consequences of the dismantling of the law-based international order in real time—what the UN Secretary-General has called “a crisis of humanity.” The four Geneva Conventions, the most widely-ratified binding rules of international law, were drafted and accepted by the world community in order to prevent a repeat of the horrors of World War II, to legitimize resistance against oppression, and to ensure the sanctity of civilian life. Yet in the current political reality, fundamental international law protections are being discarded, while a small group of powerful leaders decides whose lives matter and whose don’t.

The violence in Israel-Palestine did not begin on October 7, and international law gives us universal and well-understood frameworks through which to understand it as part of a decades-long conflict with root causes in occupation, dispossession, and denial of fundamental rights of the Palestinians as a national entity. While the UN Charter and international law give all states the right to self-defense, that right does not extend to attacking a population it occupies, as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has twice confirmed. International law also confirms the right of occupied people, including the Palestinians, to resist occupation and denial of their self-determination. Emphasizing this does not excuse the actions of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants on October 7, but provides the context which law defines, and through which it allocates, criminal responsibility.

The four Geneva Conventions of 1949 incorporate international humanitarian law, the rules that regulate the conduct of both state and non-state actors in armed conflict—Israel, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. The Geneva Conventions rules apply to all parties, and violations by one party do not legitimize violations by another. The basic rules in armed conflict are that all parties must distinguish between combatants and civilians, never target civilians or civilian objects, or cause disproportionate civilian harm. Violating these rules can be war crimes, and depending on the intent and nature of the violations, can be crimes against humanity or—the gravest of universal crimes—genocide.

In the wake of World War II, the United Nations established judicial institutions, the ICJ and later the International Criminal Court (ICC), to enforce fundamental international legal norms and prevent and prosecute mass atrocities. However, the UN was designed to give only the five victorious post-war powers the ultimate decision to deploy force to stop state aggression and grave breaches of the peace through their veto power at the Security Council. The General Assembly, in contrast, represents all 193 UN member states, each with an equal vote.

The United States has blocked multiple efforts by the General Assembly (GA) to achieve a ceasefire and comply with three ICJ orders of 26 January, 28 March, and 24 May of this year for Israel to cease its genocidal acts in Gaza, ensure humanitarian aid, allow Gazans fuel, water, and medical assistance, and secure release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza. The GA efforts have been magnified by calls across the UN humanitarian and human rights system to end what most have classified a genocide by Israel, with over 41,000 Palestinians killed and over 95,000 injured, massive destruction of housing and property, displacement of over 1.5 million people, and kidnapping and torturing thousands of others. In addition to the ICJ’s orders, UN experts have called for an immediate end to cease arms exports to Israel or risk complicity with genocide.

At the ICC, Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan requested warrants in May against three Hamas officials—two of whom Israel has since assassinated—for war crimes and crimes against humanity for their responsibility for the 1,200 Israelis killed and 250 taken hostage on October 7. He has requested warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for Israeli crimes in Gaza, including starvation as a method of war, willful killing, direct targeting of civilians, extermination and murder as war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Objections filed in the Pre-Trial Chamber by Israel and significant public pressure and threats by the United States and Israel have delayed issuance of the warrants so far. UN bodies and international organizations have decried the threats against the ICC as promoting the culture of impunity the Court was designed to prevent.

The United Nations and the international community have been unable for decades to limit massive violations of humanitarian law by Israel in its unlawful occupation of the Palestinian territory, despite hundreds of UN resolutions, most recently last month, primarily due to the US veto. Since October 7, it has been powerless to put a ceasefire in place, enable a protection mechanism for civilians in Gaza, and ensure accountability for ongoing, massive crimes in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The rules are robust, but are disintegrating while we watch, as their enforcement has been left to the whim of a few powerful players while thousands of innocents continue to be slaughtered with impunity.

Susan Akram
Clinical professor of international human rights,
School of Law