Over 1,400 Israeli academics call for end to war, hostage release

Over 1,400 academic staff and administrators from institutions of higher education in Israel have signed a petition urging the Israeli government to promptly end the war in Gaza and to secure the immediate release of the hostages.

The petition — titled “A Call on the Israeli Government to End the War and Ensure the Return of the Hostages” — states, “We, faculty and administrative staff at academic institutions in Israel, call on the Israeli government to end the war in Gaza without delay and ensure the immediate return of the hostages,” emphasizing that both these things are “moral imperatives that align with Israel’s interests.”

The petitioners argue that Israel had the right to defend itself following Hamas’ horrific attacks on October 7, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 252 were taken hostage. However, they claim that “this initial purpose has been exhausted, partly because the government has deliberately avoided setting a strategic or political vision beyond the war, instead aiming for an undefined ‘complete victory’ which, even according to senior military officials, is not only unachievable but likely to result in the death of the hostages.”

The petition says that the right to self-defense “does not grant the right to wage a war without a realistic end or one aimed at the political survival of the leadership.”

Along with causing “tremendous harm to civilians in Gaza, starvation, and unprecedented destruction of infrastructure,” the signatories say prolonging the war has led to many Israeli casualties, “mental harm to hundreds of thousands, enormous economic damage, and a severe deterioration of the rule of law,” in Israel and the West Bank.