Under the guise of “modeling civil discourse,” Cornell is hosting a war criminal.
Today, Cornell will hold Pathways to Peace, a panel billed as “a wide-ranging conversation on regional politics, power dynamics, and the historic and ethnic conflicts that have shaped the region, as well as potential paths forward for the people of Israel and Palestine.” Interim President Michael Kotlikoff has framed this panel as an exercise in open dialogue — an opportunity for civil discussion about one of the most pressing political crises of our time.
But this is not a balanced panel. It is a stage set for the voices of occupation, surveillance and suppression — vices that have actively contributed to the suffering of Palestinians for decades. There is not a single Palestinian voice of resistance, not a single scholar or activist representing the realities of Palestinian oppression. Instead, the event features three figures — Tzipi Livni, Daniel B. Shapiro and Salam Fayyad — whose records make one thing clear: This is not a conversation. It is a performance designed to pacify resistance and reinforce a one-sided narrative.
16 years ago, Israel launched the 22-day Operation Cast Lead in the midst of potential ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel. The offensive killed approximately 1,400 Palestinians, including around 300 children and hundreds of unarmed civilians, as reckless bombings devastated densely populated areas.
Tzipi Livni, then Israel’s foreign minister and member of the war cabinet, openly embraced the operation's brutality. “Israel demonstrated real hooliganism during the course of the recent operation, which I demanded,” she stated, a day after the operation had ended. Livni was forced to cancel an appearance in Great Britain after a British Court issued an arrest warrant for war crimes committed in Gaza in association with Operation Cast Lead. In a 2009 article in The Guardian about the incident, a representative from her office described Livni as “proud of all her decisions regarding Operation Cast Lead.” A week into this operation, Livni also rejected a French proposal for a 48-hour truce which would have allowed humanitarian aid into Gaza, dismissing it by claiming, “There is no humanitarian crisis in the [Gaza] Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce.”
If Livni had been the only panelist with a track record of supporting policies that fuel the region's suffering, this event would still be troubling but could operate as a conversation. But she is not alone. Each of the panelists — Livni, Shapiro and Fayyad — has played a role in sustaining the system of oppressions that continue to devastate Palestinian lives.
Daniel B. Shapiro, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, is a consultant at WestExec, a private consulting firm whose major client list includes Windward, an Israeli artificial intelligence and surveillance company. His consultancy work enables the technological infrastructure that upholds the climate of control, surveillance and terror that infests Palestine. Shapiro also testified in Congress in support of the 2020 Abraham Accords, agreements widely criticized–according to an article by Vox News, the accords “emboldened the Israelis while allowing them to disregard Palestinian demands or rights.”
The final panelist, Salam Fayyad, served in various positions in the Palestinian Authority between 2002 and 2003, a governing body that has become a pawn of Israel in upholding its apartheid regime in the West Bank. The PA actively suppresses the Palestinian people, surveilling, arresting and detaining journalists, union leaders and citizens who voice opposition to Israel’s occupation. Once arbitrarily detained — already a violation of international law — Palestinians face further human rights abuses, including deprivation of food and water, beatings, surgeries without anesthesia, torture and sexual violence.
Fayyad does not and cannot represent the true voice of the Palestinian people. His rise to power was not through the will of the people but through political appointment, with every position he held after 2007 handed to him rather than earned through a democratic vote. The PA has denied its people the right to choose their own leadership for nearly two decades, refusing to hold elections since 2006. And Palestinians have made their stance on current leadership abundantly clear — in recent polling conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 89% of Palestinians want Abbas, the current president of the Palestinian Authority, to resign. To present Fayyad as a legitimate representative of Palestinian interests is to ignore the reality of a people whose voices have been systematically silenced.
These are the three voices chosen to define today’s Pathways to Peace. Kotlikoff invokes the name of Cornell’s co-founder, Andrew Dickson White, as if this event encompasses the “ideal university,” a university committed to knowledge “unwarped to suit present abuses in Politics or Religion.”
For once, Kotlikoff is right — just not in the way he thinks.
This panel quite literally represents all that is wrong with the region. To quote Kotlikoff, “hear the echoes of Ecclesiastes: ‘What has been will be again, and what has been done will be done again.’” These words indeed echo with a cruel familiarity as Gaza burns, as another chapter of devastation unfolds, as yet another Israeli assault erases Palestinian lives, Palestinian homes and Palestinian futures. The massacre of today mirrors the massacres of the past — Operation Cast Lead, Operation Protective Edge and the Nakba itself. This is not new. This is history repeating itself, again and again, under the cover of international indifference.
Are alleged war criminals and collaborators really the best Cornell can do? As Kotlikoff entertains these panelists, we know that there is only a Pathway to Destruction as Israel continues its siege on Gaza: violating ceasefire agreements, blocking desperately needed humanitarian aid and refusing to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor. Israeli settlers escalate their terror campaign in the West Bank while the state continues to expand its scope of the intense surveillance of the Palestinian people. Devastatingly, yet unsurprisingly, Israel shatters its ceasefire with Lebanon without consequence. These are not the actions of a country seeing peace. These are the actions of a state intent on total domination — on the systematic erasure of a people.
The title of Kotlikoff’s most recent piece, “Pathways to Peace: A Call to Conversation Over Conviction,” seems to suggest that strong convictions are dangerous — that they’re “corrosive” and that skepticism and neutrality are virtues. But history proves otherwise. Neutrality has never ended oppression. Justice has never been won by those who chose comfort over action. Change comes from conviction and from the courage required to take a stand. To paraphrase Desmond Tutu, one of the most influential activists in the movement to end South African apartheid, choosing neutrality in the face of injustice is equivalent to taking the side of the oppressor.
Many students would like to believe that, in past struggles, they would have stood on the right side of history. We, the members of Students for Justice in Palestine, know where we stand today.
There is no “Pathway to Peace” without Palestinian liberation. There is no peace without the right of return, the end of Israel’s occupation and the rebuilding of Gaza. These are our convictions, not points of debate.
Unwavering and unprincipled neutrality in the face of genocide is the type of implicit support of genocide that we unequivocally stand against. Kotlikoff’s insistence on “hearing both sides” is not an appeal to reason — it is an excuse to suppress resistance.
If today is the day that you have decided to act on your convictions, we invite you to join us in a walkout of the event by meeting us at Bailey Hall at 5:45 on Monday, March 10.
Free Palestine.
Hasham Khan is a junior studying Biology & Society in the College of Arts & Sciences. He submitted this on behalf of Students for Justice in Palestine at Cornell, which can be reached via Instagram at @sjp.atcornell and by email at sjpcornell@gmail.com.
