‘A Moral Eclipse’

In his introduction of Sandberg, Amichai Magen, the inaugural Visiting Fellow in Israel Studies at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), explained the film’s title.

“There is the obvious meaning, capturing the silence of death after the acts of violence. But there is also the silence of the international community, the complete shock experienced by Jewish communities all around the world, that on Oct. 8, some people denied this ever happened … After the screams, we experienced a moral silence, a moral eclipse. And then there is the silence of the invisible wounds, the broken minds, the broken souls, the broken families,” Magen said.

After leaving Meta a few years ago, Sandberg said she was completely committed to being private and not public anymore. “I'd had it, and it was done.” And then, Oct. 7 took place, and subsequent reports about sexual violence seemed to be met with an eerie silence.

Why the silence? Sandberg offered that people are so politically polarized today that they want every fact to fit into their particular narrative. And for some, sexual violence may not fit into their narrative.

“What is happening is that politics — polarization and extreme politics — are blinding us to something that should be completely obvious. I shouldn't even have to say this. Rape is not resistance. Never. Under any circumstances. Rape is not resistance. It never has been, it never will be,” she said.
 

Anyone who has a mother, a sister, a daughter, a wife, or a friend should join together to unite against rape in war or elsewhere, she added.

“It threatens all of our values,” Sandberg said about Hamas’ massacres of Israelis.

In one interview that Sandberg conducted, she spoke with Ayelet Levy Sachar, the mother of 19-year-old Naama Levy, whose kidnapping that morning was filmed by Hamas. The horrific sight of her pajama bottoms, drenched in blood at the back, was a clear indicator that sexual brutality was carried out by Hamas.

‘He’s just a hero’

After the film concluded, Sandberg joined Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, and Rabbi Idit Solomon for a conversation and question-and-answer session with the audience. Gundar-Goshen is a clinical psychologist who has personally treated Nova survivors. This quarter she is lecturer and artist-in-residence at Stanford’s Taube Center for Jewish Studies. Rabbi Idit Solomon is the interim associate director at Hillel at Stanford.

Sandberg expressed heartache over the current situation in Gaza and said she is a supporter of a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians.

“War is a terrible thing. Terror is a terrible thing. Oct. 7 is a terrible thing. What happened after that is a terrible thing. None of this should happen. We have to believe in peace. We have to get to peace. But in order to have peace, you need two people who are willing to let the other side live in peace,” she said.

In the film, she spoke with Rami Davidson, who heroically saved over 100 lives at the Nova Music Festival.

“He's just a hero,” Sandberg said about her interview with Davidson near the spot of the Nova festival. They stood close to the trees where he recalled seeing naked and mutilated bodies tied to them on Oct. 7.

“And he starts crying. He said, ‘I could have saved them. He rescued over 100 people, mostly from the Nova … For 10 hours, he went in and out in his little car, rescuing people, risking his own life. And he was just crying about the ones he didn't get to.”
 

‘A threat to our values’

Sandberg urged the audience to embrace the point that such terror will never have a place in a civilized world.

“It may take time and it may take a lot of work by people like you and all the brave people who are here today. But we are going to persuade people that this is terror. We are going to get to a world where people don't tolerate this terror and recognize the threat to our values that this is,” she said.

The documentary was released for private and public use without any licensing fees. “We're trying to get everyone we can to see it,” she said. It can be viewed for free on YouTube.

Sandberg recalled a discussion with Denis Mukwege, a Congolese physician who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict. Mukwege said the most horrible aspect of sexual violence as a war tool is that it's incredibly effective and free.

“It doesn't just take real lives, but it destroys communities in many places around the world. When a woman is raped, in some cultures, she's then outcast from her society. It systematically destroys the fabric of communities. You have the single most effective tool of war, and it is available for free. You don't have to buy a bomb or a gun. That is so devastating because you realize what we're up against,” Sandberg said.

She concluded, “We will come through this. Not everyone will come through this. These people, some of these people will not. But we will come through this. And so, this event gives me hope.”

Follow the link for a full transcript of "Global Threats Today: The 2024 Edition."

Illiberal Actors Are on the Move  |  Amichai Magen

Around the world, we are seeing a new axis of influence coalescing. Some have called it the "axis of misery" or the "axis of resistance." It is composed of Russia and Iran and North Korea, with a lot of Chinese involvement as well. It is transforming our international system in unbelievable ways. It is united by the desire to dismantle the liberal international order, and we're starting to see the nature and the interconnectivity of this new axis of chaos much more clearly. 

You see North Korean soldiers fighting for Putin in Ukraine. You see Putin helping the Houthis attack international Western shipping in Yemen. We see North Korean tunnel technology turn up in Lebanon with Hezbollah and then with Hamas in Gaza. The interconnectivity is something that we really need to know much more about.

Historically, emperors, kings, dukes, used to spend 50% of their resources on preparing for war or waging war. But in the post-Second World War era, we built a critical norm that we've called the liberal international order. And the miracle of the liberal international order is that we've managed to take global averages of defense spending from about 50% to a global average of about 7%. And the resulting surplus wealth has allowed us to invest in education, health, and scientific discovery.

What is at stake now is the possibility of a return of a norm where states are destroyed and disappear. And we have currently three states in the international system, at the very least — Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan — that are at risk of annihilation. To that end, we must articulate a positive strategic vision for the Middle East that will strive towards a two state solution, that would give the Palestinian people the dignity and the freedom that they deserve alongside a safe and secure Israel, and that will leverage the new spirit of cooperation that exists in the Middle East.

If we allow the norm of the non-disappearance of state to erode and collapse, we will go back to the law of the jungle, where we will have to spend so much more money on the wrong things. That is what is at stake in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and with Taiwan.
 

Challenges to Democracy Come From Within |  Didi Kuo

Many people think that the threat to democracy comes from outside our borders, particularly from countries like Russia and China that are asserting themselves in new and aggressive ways.

But the real threat to democracies that we're seeing across the globe is coming from within. Leaders come to power through democratic means, but then they begin to erode power from within. They attack the electoral system and the process of democratic elections, and they take power from other branches of government and aggregate it to themselves within the office of the executive. 

The good news is there are examples of countries like France, Brazil, and Poland where illiberal leaders have been stopped by pro-democracy coalitions of people who came together. These coalitions don't necessarily agree with each other politically, but they've come together and adapted in order to foreclose on these anti-democratic forces. 

That flexibility and adaptability is the reason democracies succeed. We see this over and over again in the the United States. When our institutions have become out of date, we've changed them. We extended suffrage, first to Black Americans who were formerly enslaved, then to women, then to Native Americans. We eliminating poll taxes and rethought what it means to have a multiracial democracy. We have a long track record of making changes.

Today in 2024, some of our democratic institutions are antiquated and don't reflect our contemporary values. This is a moment where we should lean into that flexible strength of democracy and think about institutional reforms that will both strengthen our system against illiberal creep and help us better achieve the ideals that we aspiring to as a people.
 

Ukraine Is Not Fated to Lose |  Steven Pifer

There's a narrative that's taking place that Russia is winning the war, Ukraine is losing, and it's only a matter of time. And it is true that Russia has captured a bit more territory than they occupied at the start of the year. But they've only achieved that at enormous cost.

As of September, the Pentagon says Russia had lost 600,000 dead and wounded soldiers. To put that in context, in February of 2022 when this major invasion began, the total Russian military — not just the army, but the total Russian military — was 1.1 million people. And the British Ministry of Defense earlier this week assessed that Russia now is losing 1,200 soldiers killed or severely wounded per day. You have to ask how long that's sustainable.

When I talk to Ukrainians, they still regard this war as existential. They're very determined to win, and we need to do a better job of supporting that. A stable and secure Europe is vital to America's national security interests, and you're not going to have a stable and secure Europe unless there's a stable and secure Ukraine. So we need to both provide them the weapons they need and relieve some of the restrictions we currently have and allow the Ukrainians to use those weapons to strike military targets in Russia.

Because we have to ask ourselves: what does an emboldened Vladimir Putin do if he wins in Ukraine? I don't think his ambitions end with Ukraine, perhaps not even with the post-Soviet space. There's going to be a much darker Russian threat hovering over Europe if Putin wins. So let's not count the Ukrainians out.
 

China Isn't Going Away Anytime Soon  |  Oriana Skylar Mastro

There is a lot of discussion right now about the fact that the economy in China is slowing down and its demography is undergoing significant changes. What I'm here to tell you is that the challenge of China is not over, and is not going to be over any time soon. China has built power in a different way than the United States, and we have to reassess how we understand that power if we want to effectively deter, blunt, and block them from acting out in ways that threaten our partners and allies.

Since the 1990s, China has developed a significant amount of political, economic, and military power. They've gone from having an economy smaller than France’s  to the second largest in the world. They've gone from not being involved in international institutions to a great degree, not even having diplomatic relations with major countries like South Korea, to now having stronger and greater diplomatic networks, especially in Asia, than the United States.

What we really need to understand is that the U.S.-China competition is not about the United States or about China; it's about the rest of the world, and how the rest of the world sees us and how China interacts with us. The balance of power is shifting, and we have to be a lot smarter and a lot faster if we want to make sure it shifts in favor of our interests.

The United States hasn't had a comprehensive strategy towards the developing world in a long time. And we are running out of time to get that balance right in Asia. We don't have the right stuff. We don't have it in the right numbers, and it's not in the right place. Some of this is about deterring war over Taiwan, but it's also about generally maintaining peace and stability in Asia.
 

We're Doing Better (But Not Enough) on Climate Change |  Marshall Burke

Many people don't recognize how much progress we're actually making on climate issues. Emissions have fallen by 20% since 2005. We're actually speeding up the amount of substantial progress being made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and dealing with the core climate change problem, which is the human emission of greenhouse gasses.

In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act and the subsequent implementation of various rules the Biden administration has championed has given a huge boost in transitioning our economy to greener energy technologies, transportation technologies, and other kinds of infrastructure. We're moving a lot of cash to get that done, and the president is trying to get as much of it out the door as he can before his term ends.

Globally, the progress has been less rapid. Emissions are roughly flat. But overall, we're still making progress. I co-teach an undergraduate class on climate change, and we've had to update our slides on how much warming we're expecting over the next century. We thought it was going to be four degrees Celsius. Now we think it's going to be something between two and three degrees Celsius.

But the flip side of that is that we're still going to get warming of two to three degrees Celsius. We're already experiencing warming of about a degree Celsius, which is about two degrees Fahrenheit, and it's projected that we're going to get another three to five degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That is a lot of warming, and we are not prepared to deal with it. We need to do much more on mitigation and much more on adaptation if we're going to meet the realities of living in a changing climate.

So we've had progress on the one hand, but there's still a lot of work left to do in the coming decades.
 

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What have you learned since arriving to Stanford as a visiting fellow in Israel Studies about the need for education about Israel and the Middle East more broadly?

The twentieth-century English novelist, L.P. Hartley, once observed that “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Well, the Middle East is a foreign region; they do things differently there too. The Middle East is an enormously diverse, vibrant, and exciting part of the world, but it is not a mirror image of America. And that is something that, frankly, very intelligent, well-educated and well-meaning members of elite American institutions often find rather difficult to acknowledge. The notion of difference is uncomfortable to many of us. We fear that pointing to differences will paint us as judgmental and make us vulnerable to social opprobrium, or worse. But grappling with places that “do things differently” is essential if we are going to understand a complex and contested world. Grappling with places that “do things differently” is crucial if we are going to fulfill our duty of preparing our students to become leaders that face the world with truth, moral courage, and sound policy. We need more and better education about Israel, the Palestinian people, and the Middle East because we want to strengthen our capacity for deep empathy, and effective interaction with actors that are guided by different worldviews. We also need more and better education about Israel and the Middle East so that we both appreciate what we have here in the U.S. that the Middle East lacks, while respecting the things that are prevalent in Israel and the Middle East that can benefit the rest of the world. 

What will you be teaching this academic year, and what do you hope students gain from it?

This year, FSI’s Israel Studies program offers a rich set of educational opportunities, both inside classrooms and outside, in various conferences, panels, visits and webinars. If there was a truly special ray of light for me in the last academic year, it was our amazing Stanford undergraduate students. I taught my course "Israel: Society, Politics, and Policy" last spring quarter, and will teach it again this coming spring. I find that our students come to the subject with curiosity, openness, critical thought, and the capacity for historical and comparative political thinking. In a class exercise we did, some of them even managed to put together a plausible Israeli coalition government, which is more than can be said for most Israeli politicians.

The program recently hosted two events with Tzipi Livni, who has held several senior leadership roles in the Israeli government, including as opposition leader to Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. In your discussions with her, what did she say that resonated with you? What are some of your takeaways?

It was a tremendous joy to host Tzipi Livni here at FSI and have her interact with so many of our faculty and students. No one alive today possesses the depth and breadth of her combined experience in domestic Israeli politics and constitutional debates, international peace negotiations, and post-war diplomatic settlements. Given the current situation in the Middle East, her visit could not have been timelier.

What really struck me in the set of conversations Tzipi Livni held with faculty and students, was her emphasis on two related points. One is her insight that tactical military successes – even spectacular ones – do not in themselves translate into strategic gains, let alone long-term changes in geopolitical realities. If war, to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, is politics by other means, then military victories only matter if they are then leveraged for constructive changes in economic, social, and political conditions on the ground. Otherwise, tactical successes dissipate quickly and make little long-term difference. And second, the United States and its allies in the region – notably Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and, more tentatively, Saudi Arabia – currently lack a positive, forward-looking strategy for the future of the region. That vacuum will continue to be exploited by Iran, Russia, and increasingly China, at great cost to the peoples of the region and American interests. The blow of the October 7th massacre, and subsequent multi-front war faced by Israel at the hands of Iran and its proxies (based in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen) has derailed the broadly positive pre-October 7th dynamic of Arab-Israeli rapprochement and regional cooperation represented by the Abraham Accords. To counter what Ambassador Dennis Ross has called Iran’s “Axis of Misery”, we urgently need to articulate and pursue an alternative vision of peace, prosperity, and stability in the Middle East – what we might call a Middle East Peace and Prosperity Pact. Barring such a positive, forward-looking agenda, we are virtually guaranteed to continue on a downward spiral of war, instability, refugee flows, and state disintegration in the Middle East. This will play into the hands of the radicals in the region and serve Iranian and Russian interests, undermining American ones.        

How do you think the events of Oct. 7 and the ensuing wars will shape Israeli society and politics into the future?

The October 7^th massacre was not just another large-scale terrorist attack. It was what Anna Rebecca Levenberg and I described as a “Transformative Tragedy” that has already indelibly altered Israel and the Middle East, and will continue to reverberate for decades to come. On that day Israelis experienced their worst nightmare. Finding themselves defenseless for a few hours in their homes inside Israel (not settlements) they were attacked with a cruelty and glee reminiscent of the worst pogroms of the 14^th and 19^th centuries and the Holocaust. For one day, every single Israeli – and every single friend of Israel around the world – saw exactly what would happen to 10 million Israelis (Christians, Druz, Jews, and Muslims) if Israel was ever overrun by its enemies. The trauma has already produced five main outcomes:

Firstly, the social contract between the People of Israel and the State of Israel was broken on October 7^th and that fracture has been compounded over the past year by the excruciating failure to free all the Israeli hostages – 101 of which, alive and dead, are still in Hamas captivity. The breach of trust was also exacerbated by the Israeli government’s abysmal performance in the delivery of emergency public services in the weeks and months following the shock of October 7^th. Domestically, Israel will spend the next years, possibly decades, trying to restore or renegotiate that social contract and rehabilitating trust in the state. I don’t expect radical change in the next elections (scheduled for November 2026) but politically the Israel of 2030 or 2034 will be very different. Just like it took four years for the 1973 Yom Kippur War to bring about a transformation in Israeli politics and society, so will it be with October 7^th 2023 and the subsequent war, which is still ongoing.

Second, public outrage at the murder, rape, and mass kidnapping perpetrated by Gazans on October 7^th has moved the Israeli political map further to the right, though mainly to the center-right. It also makes Israelis less sympathetic to the real suffering of the Palestinians, the majority of whom are civilians caught up in the fighting in Gaza and anti-terror miliary incursions in the West Bank. The notion that Hamas’s massacre should instigate a process towards Palestinian statehood is now broadly seen by Israelis as an unacceptable reward for terrorism. This will make negotiating a two-state solution even more difficult than in the past, unless a credible new regional initiative addresses the Palestinian issue within a compelling broader package that would include normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia, disarming of Palestinian militias, deradicalization of Palestinian education, and massive investment in economic development projects that would help ensure the stability of Egypt, Jordan, and a future Palestinian State. We must not permit the creation of yet another failed state in the Middle East that serves as a safe haven for terrorism.

Thirdly, October 7^th convinced the vast majority of Israelis that deterrence failed and that living in close proximity to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and Hezbollah is no longer a tenable proposition. October 7^th turned a disastrous Israeli strategy of concessions and accommodation into a strategy of active dismantlement of the “ring of fire” built by Iran around Israel’s skinny neck. A year after the massacre, there remain over 100,000 Israelis internally displaced from their homes and communities in the south, on the border with Gaza, and in the northern part of the country, on the borders with Lebanon and Syria. Anyone who knows how small Israel is, is aware that “on the border” means literally within hundreds of feet of a fence, with Hamas, PIJ and Hezbollah fighters waiting on the other side. The number one priority for the Israeli government right now is to restore enough security on those borders to persuade the 100,000 displaced that it is safe to go back home and that another October 7^th massacre will not take place, despite the repeated promise of senior Hamas officials to replicate the massacre again and again until Israel is annihilated . Reassuring the displaced is a tall order when trauma is fresh and trust is low. Israel is close to achieving that goal vis-à-vis Gaza, where Hamas and PIJ have generally been dismantled as a fighting force. As long as Hamas and PIJ are not able to be resupplied with Iranian missiles through the Philadelphi Corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border, the risk of large-scale rocket fire from Gaza has been greatly diminished. Similarly, but much more challenging, in Lebanon the aims of the current Israeli campaign are to: (1) dramatically degrade Hezbollah’s vast arsenal of missiles, rockets, and drones; (2) find and blow up the extensive terror tunnel system built by Hezbollah on and across the border with Israel; (3) push back Hezbollah’s elite fighting force – the Radwan Force – from the border with Israel, and; (4) prevent Iran from resupplying Hezbollah.

Fourthly, the October 7^th massacre and subsequent war in Gaza and Lebanon, has put Iran and Israel on the path to direct military confrontation. For two decades, Iran’s strategy against Israel – pioneered by the late Kassem Soulaimani – was one of “annihilation by attrition” through proxies. The strategy was simple: if little Israel (economically open and dependent on Western support) could be made domestically uninhabitable, economically weakened, and internationally isolated, it would be gradually worn down and eventually become defenseless. And while Israel was busy fighting an endless war on multiple fronts – its people and high-tech economy suffering, and its international legitimacy undermined by images of dead children in Gaza – the Ayatollahs would be free to continue oppressing the Iranian people and building a nuclear bomb. Defeating Israel would be achieved not by one decisive blow, but by a million cuts from multiple proxies nurtured by Iran and housed in failed states across the Middle East. But sacrificing the lives of the proxy fighters – Afghans, Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian and Yemeni – is so much cheaper for the Iranians than risking the lives of members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Attacking Israel via Hamas or Hezbollah also happens to play much better for the Iranians on the BBC. Israel is made to look like Goliath fighting plucky “resistance movements” with exotic names in Arabic, not Persian. October 7^th triggered a process that would remove the veil of plausible deniability from the Iranian puppet-master. As Israel began to dismantle Hamas, the wizard of Tehran stepped from behind the curtain. The night between April 13 and 14 was pivotal. On that night Iran launched 350 projectiles – drones, cruise and ballistic missiles – at a range of miliary and civilian targets in Israel. And on October 2^nd 2024, as Jews in Israel and around the world were preparing to celebrate the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, Iran launched at least 180 ballistic missiles at Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem. We are now at the beginning of the Iran-Israel War.

Lastly, Israelis, like Jews all over the world, were horrified by the ghastly scenes of celebration and “exhilaration” that exploded on elite university campuses in America, Canada, and Europe from October 8^th onwards – before Israel fired one bullet in retaliation. To witness some of the most privileged, liberal, and free young people in the world openly side with some the most barbaric, oppressive, and cruel terrorist organizations in the world, was no less shocking than the events of October 7^th itself. Israelis know that these displays of ignorance and bigotry are at odds with American values, and that the vast majority of Americans, including the majority of college students, want nothing to do with a worldview that pretends mass murder and rape is “legitimate resistance.” But they also know that shockingly few influencers came to their defense as their hostages were being brutalized in Hamas’s tunnels and as they were facing a multi-front war. The silence of human rights activists and feminist organizations was particularly deafening. The moral inversion of accusing, not Hamas, but Israel of “genocide,” simply serves as proof to most Israelis that they can only rely on themselves. The consequence of the last year is that virtually all Israelis – and the majority of Jews around the world – now understand the world to be far more ominous, far more callous, and far more antisemitic than they ever suspected before October 7^th. This will make Israel wearier of efforts at outside intervention and more determined to become more powerful and strategically self-sufficient. 

You have firsthand experience working on policy as a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. What success did you see there, and what challenges remain in addressing environmental issues? 

Israeli politics is quite polarized, not unlike the U.S., but issues relating to the environment generally enjoy support from all political parties. I did a lot of work with partners on the Israeli right and amongst religious politicians to engage them and receive support for a green agenda. The press made a big deal about this “bi-partisan” orientation, but it feels very natural to me. Regardless of people’s political orientation, everyone wants their children to breath clean air, drink potable war, and live in a planet with a stable climate.

That being said, I worry that public awareness of these issues remains deficient in Israel even though we are considered a “climate hotspot.” Other issues, particularly those involving security, don’t leave our citizens very much bandwidth to think about other matters, even urgent ones like climate change.

That’s why having a committee that convenes regular meetings and pushes the executive branch to be more conscientious in its mitigation and adaptation efforts from inside government is so critical. While I was serving, we held hearings on increasing shading in urban areas, removing bureaucratic obstacles to installation of “agrovoltaic” systems (solar panels on farmlands), expediting sales of electric vehicles through tax incentives, and many other topics. 

Our paramount objective was to pass a “climate law,” which would provide a statutory basis for the energy transition that needs to be accelerated. This is a step many state and national governments have taken in recent years. Unfortunately, the “Government of Change” that my party was part of in Israel fell apart before this critical legislation could be passed. That’s truly unfortunate. But the cabinet did make a commitment to reach net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050.  

Ready or not, the climate crisis is here, and making these issues part of the country’s political agenda and keeping them in the spotlight is important. The younger generations know this and are speaking out, and we have a responsibility to make sure they are heard.


What environmental implications does the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel have for the region?

For me, the war is not just about personal security, but also environmental security. Extremist, Islamist forces, and proxies for the Iranian government all threaten the kind of cooperation which is critical for the region.

I am encouraged that not one of my environmental colleagues from Arab countries — including many Palestinian colleagues — has broken off interactions with me since the war began. We continue to do research with a West Bank Palestinian group from Al Quds University about exposures to pharmaceutical products from wastewater reuse. We urgently need more of this kind of cooperation if we are going to address the pressing needs being created by this crisis.

Consider, for example, the groundwater situation in Gaza. When Egypt held the Gaza Strip in the 1960s, the aquifers were contaminated by salt water intrusion from the Mediterranean Sea caused by over pumping. It is absolutely critical that the people of Gaza have desalinated water (like Israel does) both to meet their immediate needs now and as climate-driven droughts continue to change local hydrological conditions in the future. For this to happen, whoever rules Gaza will have to stop investing limited local resources in military weaponry and focus on environmental infrastructure.

The human toll of this war is heartbreaking on all sides. But I believe that when the dust settles, there will be a victory for those who want to work together on critical environmental issues.

How can institutions like Stanford help in addressing these issues?

There’s no question that higher education is evolving. Universities generally divide up their departments according to disciplinary distinctions that were germane at the advent of the twentieth century but often make less sense today. In the fields I work in, it’s common lip service to talk about “interdisciplinary solutions.” But what that actually means in practice is that students need to be given literacy in topics ranging from chemistry and biology to economics, social science, and even aesthetics. I am very impressed with Stanford’s new Doerr School of Sustainability, which is aspiring to serve as an example of how this can be done. 

The course I am currently teaching, “Public Policy and Sustainability Challenges: Israel and the Middle East,” is designed to give the students a sense of what policies appear to work and which ones do not.  For instance, carbon taxes used to be a theoretical idea. But with 61 countries having introduced policies that monetize carbon, we can now dispassionately evaluate these interventions.

The students I see in my class are a healthy mix of MBA and sustainability scholars. They break up into groups of four and serve as consultants for a variety of climate tech companies, applying what they have learned to the real-life regulatory challenges which these promising ventures face. Stanford is preparing leaders, many of whom are committed to working in the climate space. I hope that the class provides them with valuable insights and tools to do this.


Looking to the future, what policies would you like to see put in place to precipitate meaningful action on climate-related issues in both the short and long term?

It is increasingly clear that despite increased global awareness, humanity is not meeting its goals for reducing greenhouse emissions. The population is growing, and billions of people are justifiably seeking a higher standard of living. If we are going to meet the unprecedented challenges posed by the climate crisis, the world as we know it will have to change; we are going to have undergo a complete technological makeover. This means an end to the fossil fuel era, beef as it is raised today, steel, cement, plastics – you name it. And this won’t happen without effective public policies.

One of the things that we started doing in Israel is requiring every school child from kindergarten to grade 12 to take 40 hours of classes about climate related topics during the course of the school year. That’s only a start, but it’s an important one. At Tel Aviv University, ten different departments have collaborated to produce a massive online open class, or “MOOC,” to get that expertise out of the university and into the hands of people. Education, coupled with urgency and action, is crucial. These are the kinds of initiatives that I believe are needed if we are going to see any real progress. 

Follow the link for a full transcript of "Global Threats: What's at Stake and What We Can Do About It."

Reform the Electoral College |  Didi Kuo

One of the major problems people feel right now in American politics is that their voices aren’t heard. We live in what my colleague Francis Fukuyama calls a "vetocracy," meaning there are a lot of veto points in our system.

In a lot of other democratic institutional configurations, you have rule by the majority. But in the United States, we have an institutional configuration that allows a very small group — for example, 15 people in the House of Representatives — to hold up government in various ways. We see this in dramatic examples on the national level, but it also trickles down to the local level where you see it in issues like permitting hold-ups.

Reforming the Electoral College would be a very direct way of changing that vetocracy. The United States is one of the only advanced democracies that has this indirect system of elections. If all the votes counted equally and all the presidential candidates had to treat all of us the same and respond to us equally in all 50 states, it would do a lot to show the power of the popular vote and realign us more closely to the principle of majoritarianism that we should seek in our institutions.

Allow Taiwan to License Weapons Production |  Larry Diamond

My recommendation is deterrence, deterrence, deterrence. It is not inevitable that the People's Republic of China is going to launch an all-out military assault on Taiwan. But if the United States does not do more to make that a costly decision, the likelihood it will happen are exponentially higher.

Deterrence works. The United States deterred the Soviet Union from moving against West Berlin and much of Europe for decades. But it only works if you have a superior force.

To that end, the United States needs to pre-position more military force in the region. There's now a $12 billion backlog of weapons that Taiwan has ordered and paid for but hasn't received yet. That’s because the American defense production system is completely broken. This is the same reason why we can’t get weapons to Ukraine at the pace we need there.

This issue could be fixed, at least in part, if we licensed the production of some of these weapon systems directly to Taiwan. Their ability to build plants and produce these systems is much more agile than our own, and so licensing the rights to production would dramatically increase the deterrence factor against China, in addition to deepening our cooperation with allies throughout the region.

Pursue Climate Mitigation AND Adaptation |  Marshall Burke

There are three things we can do in response to climate change: we can mitigate, we can adapt, or we can suffer. We’re off to a good start, but we have decades of long slog ahead of us to get that right. And it's not just us; even if we do a good job, we depend on other countries to also do a good job. The Biden administration has already been engaged on some of that front, but there’s more work to do there.

And even with our best efforts, we are not going to be able to move as fast as we want or mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as we need to avoid climate change. So, we're going to have to live with some climate change, which means adaptation. And if we can't adapt, then we're going to suffer. 

The key point is that we are very poorly adapted to today's climate, much less the climate we're going to have 30 or 50 years from now. The West Coast and California are prime examples of this. There have been monumental wildfire seasons there the last few years, and there are significant negative health impacts from smoke exposure. I see it in my own home, even as someone who studies this and should know better and do more to reduce those risks.

The point is, we're really poorly adapted to the current climate, and things are going to get a lot worse. We need to focus on mitigation; it’s still really important and we need to get it done. But at the same time, we need to figure out how to adapt and live with the changing climate that we're going to experience.

Weapons for Ukraine, Sanctions on Russia |  Michael McFaul

When I was in Kyiv this September, I had a chance to meet with President Zelenskyy, and he pointed out an absolutely crazy reality. Companies in the United States and Europe are still making tens of thousands of dollars in profits from selling various technologies that ultimately end up in Russia. It’s getting in through places like Hong Kong and Kazakhstan and Belarus and Georgia, and it allows Russia to keep waging its horrific war.

At the same time, the United States is spending millions of dollars to arm Ukraine with systems to shoot down the Russian rockets that were built using the components they got from the West. That’s completely illogical, bad policy. I know it’s hard to control technology, but we have to find a better way than what we’re doing right now. If you're an American taxpayer, that is your money being wasted.

That means more and better weapons for Ukraine, faster. And that means more and better sanctions on Russia, faster. That is the way to speed the end of this war.

Be Confident in America |  Amichai Magen

Just a few short years ago, we were all talking about the decline of the United States. I think that is far from inevitable. People speak about the 20th century as the “American Century.” The 21st century can also be the American Century. It's in our hands.

Be bullish on America. Be confident in America. Rediscover the spirit of America for adaptation and innovation and entrepreneurship. We need to wake up from the break we’ve taken from history in the post-Cold War era and rally once again in our spirit, our research, and our intellect.

We need to find new solution structures to the great challenges of our era: environmental challenges, AI, biotechnological challenges, nuclear challenges. And we can do it. China is on the verge of demographic decline and economic decline. Russia is a very dangerous international actor, but it is not a global superpower. We must reinvent the institutions and the alliances that we need for the 21st century in order to make sure that we continue a journey towards greater peace and prosperity for all of mankind.

The entire discussion, including the audience Q&A, is available to watch on FSI's YouTube channel. To stay up to date on our content, be sure to like, subscribe, and turn on notifications.

We have been living a nightmare since Oct. 7. In Israel and across the world, Jews and their true friends are suffering terribly. We are engulfed in a toxic cloud of horror, trauma, grief, incredulity, anger, fear, shame and, yes, a sense of abandonment.

Many, if not most, of us know someone whose loved ones were murdered, maimed or kidnapped. The survivors — our families, friends and students — are numb with pain and anxiety.

How could this have happened in Israel, a country that was created to ensure that something like this could never happen? How do I keep my family and my community safe from Hamas’ calls for global jihad? How do we, as Jews, wake up from this nightmare and begin the long process of healing?

For me, a Jewish response to Oct. 7 can be captured in three words: rise, recover, reimagine.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE IN THE J. WEEKLY

Scholars hosted by the Visiting Fellows in Israel Studies program at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) on October 27 discussed the lessons of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and its relevance for understanding the current Israel-Hamas war.

The seminar, “1973 Yom Kippur War: Lessons to Remember,” was moderated by Larry Diamond, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at FSI who is also leading the Visiting Fellows in Israel Studies program at FSI. 

In his opening remarks, Diamond said, “Our hearts go out to the people of Israel and this struggle they have now in the wake of one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in anyone’s living memory, maybe the most horrific. And to all of the people in Israel and Gaza, who are innocent people who’ve lost their lives.”

Speakers included Or Rabinowitz of the International Relations Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a visiting associate professor at FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC); Gil-li Vardi, a former visiting scholar at CISAC and Stanford history lecturer; Professor Emeritus Meron Medzini of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir’s spokesperson during 1973–1974; and Ron Hassner, the Chancellor’s Professor of Political Science and Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies at UC Berkeley. 

Israel’s Nuclear Question

On October 6, 1973, an Arab alliance of Egyptian and Syrian forces launched a surprise attack on Israel on Yom Kippur – the Jewish holy day of atonement. The three-week conflict was one of the deadliest Arab-Israeli wars. It ended with an Israeli victory, shaping inter-state relations in the region for years to come.

Rabinowitz addressed the nuclear dimension of the Yom Kippur War, quoting Richard Nixon, who said in 1972, “The Israelis have nuclear weapons. I’m not going to tell you how I know, but I know that.”

She said a “partial picture” exists of Israel’s nuclear capabilities during the 1973 conflict, and more research needs to be done. Back then, Israel and the U.S. had reached an understanding about Israel’s “ambiguous nuclear posture,” as well as an agreement that any U.S.-made fighter jets would not be used to deploy nuclear weapons. Regarding nuclear-equipped missiles, “we have to take it into account that this was probably a political signaling which wasn’t backed by an actual ability to put in a nuclear warhead on the ballistic missile, but we just don’t know,” Rabinowitz said.

She added, “I am convinced that Golda Meir would have shown nuclear restraint, even if a bilateral understanding had not been in effect with the U.S. – because it made sense, there were moral clouds, and the Israeli objective was to align itself with the U.S. and guarantee further collaboration, and that would have just backfired.”

An Evolving Military Strategy

Vardi said the Yom Kippur War generated a huge incentive for the U.S. military and others to later develop the “AirLand Battle Doctrine,” which emphasizes close coordination between land forces acting as an aggressively maneuvering defense, and air forces attacking rear-echelon forces feeding those front-line enemy forces. 

“It also taught the military leadership in Israel that their instincts are the right ones, that they should always be on the offensive. If war is coming, then they should always be very active about it – active to the point of aggression,” she said.

As for Egypt, Vardi said, they weren’t planning an all-out war against Israel if they didn’t receive help from the Soviet Union or elsewhere, and their tactical goals were therefore limited.

She also noted Israel’s battle doctrine, which rests on three pillars – deterrence, intelligence, and military decision-making, as well as a defensive strategy to be executed offensively, by transferring the battle to enemy territory.

This doctrine failed on October 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing more than 1,400 people in Israeli territory. “Israeli security perceptions will need to change,” Vardi said.

Confronting Hamas

On October 7, Medzini said, Israel was dealt its worst blow since 1948. “Totally unprepared, wrong intelligence, the army in disarray, leadership, very poor response. And, parts of proper Israel were occupied by Palestinians with a huge number of casualties.”

He said, “The entire country was stunned. How could this happen to us?”

The Yom Kippur War was totally different than today’s conflict between Israel and Hamas, Medzini said. In 1973 it was launched by mostly secular governments in Egypt and Syria, whereas Hamas is a religious organization. 

“We thought in terms of Western thinking or Arab thinking. We did not take into account that Hamas is a religious organization. If you read their covenant, if you look at the logo, it’s not only to destroy the Jews of Israel, it’s to destroy the Jews” everywhere, Medzini said. 

Hassner said Israel’s opponents erred during the Yom Kippur War by believing the Israelis would be unable to mobilize quickly. 

“Mobilization turned out to be very easy,” he said, “because everybody was in the same place. Everybody was in the synagogue. And so, unit commanders just went to the nearest synagogues and told all the young men to come out. The roads were empty, which the Egyptians seemed to be unaware of. Mobilization to the front may have happened at twice the speed at which the Israeli military had planned to mobilize, because nobody else was on the road.”

Also, Hassner said, a backlash effect can exist if one is attempting to exploit their opponents’ religious holiday – “you are going to unleash a certain amount of religiously motivated anger.”

Regarding Israel’s security situation today, Rabinowitz said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies reflect a deep miscalculation of Hamas since the terror group rose to power in 2007 in the Gaza Strip. After Netanyahu took office in 2009, “he went on the record saying that his main mission is to strengthen Hamas” by favoring it over other Palestinian groups.

Medzini said Israel has to conduct a major operation in Gaza to make sure that Hamas loses its military and political capabilities. “You can’t kill an ideology. You can’t kill a religion. But you can certainly destroy a military capability and capacity,” he said. But, Medzini also noted, “Where do we go from here? What’s the end game?”

Diamond spoke of reigniting the peace process and bringing back the two-state solution in a very actual manner. “I’ll note what I think everybody in the room knows that if Hamas is removed from Gaza, something else needs to go and fill that gap.”

Scholars from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies discussed the global and regional implications of Hamas’ terror attack during a webinar on October 13, 2023.

Larry Diamond, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at FSI and William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, moderated the conversation. Speakers included Abbas Milani, the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies; Ori Rabinowitz of the International Relations Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a visiting associate professor at FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation; and Amichai Magen, of the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy, Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel, and the inaugural visiting fellow in Israel Studies at FSI. 

Israel declared war against Hamas after the terrorist group infiltrated the country on October 7, firing thousands of rockets at residential areas, killing civilians, and inflicting the most lethal attack on Israel since its founding in 1948.

Diamond said, “The brutal October 7 attacks on innocent Israeli civilians by the terrorist group Hamas constitute one of the most appalling incidents of terrorism in our lifetimes.” He noted that for a smaller country the size of Israel, when compared to the U.S., their death toll of 1,200 that weekend is equivalent to more than 40,000 Americans – or more than 10 times the U.S. death toll on 9/11.

Impact on Israelis

Rabinowitz said Israelis have been deeply affected by Hamas’ atrocities. “It’s trauma being compounded by failure of the Israeli state and the army institution to respond immediately to all levels of this. It really brought to the surface images of the Holocaust.” 

However, she said, Israeli civil society is strong and resilient, and it’s taking on the role of providing what the government's institutions and leadership should have provided more quickly after the attacks. “Soldiers called up for duty were driven to the front by their parents and by family friends,” for example, she said.

Magen said Hamas’ attacks shattered three fundamental myths for Israelis. One involved the notion that Israel could coexist with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The second illusion that broke was the belief that the government of Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces could effectively protect the civilian population.

“The reason why this is a much bigger trauma than Yom Kippur (in 1973) is because on Yom Kippur there was a very high military death toll, but the civilian population was protected,” Magen said. "However, this time, thousands of Israeli civilians were massacred before the Israeli state could even respond."

The third illusion, Magen said, was the belief that global jihad was non-existent in today’s world. “This is a cautionary tale – sometimes Israel is the canary in the coal mine. What happens in Israel today may tragically happen in the United States or elsewhere.”

Iran and Regional Implications

Milani noted the speculation about whether Iran ordered the attacks, but said that misses the larger picture. “Iran created Hamas in this sense. Iran is the architect of the narrative” that the future of the Middle East must not include Israel.

He said the only solution for lasting peace in the region is a two-state solution (with a Palestinian state) and an Iran with a democratic government. But extremists are in power in all the involved countries and now this outcome is even more difficult, said Milani. “Iran has been adamant in undermining the two-state solution.”

Milani also said the Hamas incursions should end the illusion shared by some in the West that you can make enough concessions to the Iranian regime and it will change its support for terrorism. 

“This regime is not going to abide by laws, it is not going to abide by its commitments. It is murderously suppressing the Iranian people,” he said.

Iran, Milani believes, sees the Hamas attacks as a major turning point in its bid for regional supremacy and the demise of Israel. It wants to undermine the delicate normalization talks between Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. With Iranian-backed Hezbollah aiming more than 150,000 rockets at Israel, Iran is maneuvering for possibly a broader conflict and chaos that could see Israel confronting several fronts.

Milani added that his heart goes out to all the victims and the hostages of this ordeal, noting that the 2 million-plus citizens of Gaza are also hostages to this catastrophe. “Human beings should be considered as hostages in this brutal regime (Hamas).” Their lives should be protected as well, and this would be best for the future of the Middle East and for the future of Israel.

Factors Leading to Attacks

Rabinowitz said scholars in the future will need to examine how the more radical factions in the Middle East realigned and created such a situation, she said. 

Magen said Israel was too complacent in regard to their technologically-enhanced security systems, rife with domestic political polarization, and naïve that a deal could be struck with Hamas.

“Israel was clearly perceived to be vulnerable and divided internally, and the enemy pounced. We in Israel tend to think that we watch very carefully what is happening in the neighborhood, but the neighborhood also watches us,” he said.

With Iran nearing the nuclear threshold for a weapon of mass destruction, the West needs to be incredibly aware of this possibility, Magen said. 

Campus Conversations

Diamond and the scholars emphasized the need for civil dialogue and safe spaces for conversations on college campuses about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rabinowitz said the Stanford community is well-positioned to achieve this. 

She said, “We’re not in Israel and Gaza, and we can use this opportunity to foster more dialogue between the different groups, between different students, and I think that is part of our jobs.”

Magen said, “We must create constructive spaces for empathic and sympathetic analysis, conversation, and engagement. We need to talk about difficult issues – we live in a difficult world.” 

The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies produced the webinar, “The Hamas Terrorist Attack on Israel and its Implications for the Middle East,” in cooperation with the Visiting Fellows in Israel Studies program, where Professors Magen and Rabinowitz are visiting scholars. The program was launched in September 2021 with the aim of deepening FSI’s academic expertise in geopolitics and democracy studies as it relates to Israel.