“As I watch this catastrophe for the Palestinians unfold, I am left with one simple question for Israel’s leaders, their American defenders, and the Biden administration: have you no decency?“²1. https://youtu.be/9Rx6fiiM9a0?si=ghB9FdSZ0ncyDiLS
– I do not believe that anything I say about what is happening in Gaza will affect Israeli or American policy in that conflict.
But I want to be on record so that when historians look back on this moral calamity, they will see that some Americans were on the right side of history.
What Israel is doing in Gaza to the Palestinian civilian population – with the support of the Biden administration – is a crime against humanity that serves no meaningful military purpose. As J-Street, an important organization in the Israel lobby, puts it, “The scope of the unfolding humanitarian disaster and civilian casualties is nearly unfathomable.”[1]
Let me elaborate²
2. https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/death-and-destruction-in-gaza
3. https://www.mearsheimer.com/
I am the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago, where I have taught since 1982.
Above all else, I am an international relations theorist.
More specifically, I am a realist, which means that I believe that the great powers dominate the international system and they constantly engage in security competition with each other, which sometimes leads to war.
Although I have dedicated my life to scholarship, I have also tried to engage in the policy debates of the day.
For example, I was one of the most outspoken opponents of the 2003 Iraq War before it happened.
I firmly believe that social science theories are invaluable for making and analyzing foreign policy.
