‘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.
 

Get additional analysis from scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies by following us on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and by subscribing to our newsletters and updates.

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. 

Estimated $18 Billion Reconstruction 

To begin with, projected reconstruction costs to rebuild Gaza currently total $18 billion, said Galit Cohen, director of the Program on Climate Change at the Israel Institute for National Security. She has experience identifying and analyzing risks and opportunities for Israel’s national security in the field of climate change.

Water, sewage, waste, food and air pollution risks abound in Gaza, which is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, Cohen said. At least 57 percent of water, sanitation and health facilities in Gaza have been destroyed so far, including desalinization plants, and only 3-7 liters of water is typically available per day for each person, which is well below the recommended minimum of 50-100 liters.

“In the current situation in regard to the environmental issues, it's about the water security and about the sewage, sanitation and construction waste – all the list of those issues that need to be mitigated and also dealt with,” Cohen said. For example, “there is no active wastewater treatment facility now in Gaza,” and the many unclaimed dead bodies deep in the rubble pose environmental risks as well.

As for solutions, she said, “Trying to build the institutions and the government that can undertake the responsibility of the civil society there” is the first step to working together on a rebuild of Gaza. The goal should be to create a new coalition with the U.S. and countries such as Egypt, Jordan, UAE, and Saudi Arabia (and others) that can undertake a reconstruction of Gaza so Palestinians can live there without enduring an environmental catastrophe.

“This is the only way we can survive here – Israel and all the rest,” Cohen said.
 

Coalition Building

Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed, director of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, described the sensitive environmental interdependence of countries in the region.

“The streams and rivers originating in Israel and the West Bank originate in Jordan, and in Israel the vast majority of the aquifers of underground water in our region is shared between Israel and its neighbors – between Jordan and its neighbors, and it’s shared between Palestine and its neighbors. That means if there’s an environmental challenge or an environmental issue with the water that we have, one country alone cannot deal with it. Regional cooperation is a must,” he said.

Dr. Hamed has served as the Israeli Ministry of Science’s Deputy Chief Scientist, and later the Acting Chief Scientist, and was the highest ranking Palestinian in the Israeli government. About his current position at the Arava Institute, he said, “We use the environment as a tool. We use science as [a] diplomacy tool to bring people together. We use science to build bridges, to build trust, and to build understanding.”

The regional effects in climate change could be exacerbated by the war in Gaza, he said. “The region that we live in is a hotspot when it comes to climate change, the heat waves, and the sea level rise.”

The warming of the Eastern Mediterranean is increasing, and it is already much higher than any other place in the world, he said. On top of this, climate change often produces migration to other areas, creating possible instability effects for existing populations in the new areas, and statistics show people already have been moving out of Gaza and other countries in the immediate region, likely due to the worsening climate, and in addition now, to the conflict.

He said the intense bombing of Gaza has significantly damaged farmlands, infrastructure, including apartment buildings, the roads, water treatment plants, wastewater treatment plants and water wells. “What happened on Oct. 7 happened because of the lack of knowledge of the other side.” 

He added, “This is a great chance for us to rethink what happened and to rebuild a better future for all of us.”
 

Renewable Energy Concerns – or Opportunity?

The war in Gaza seriously affects the prospect of green or renewable energy in the immediate conflict area, said Dorit Banet, who co-founded the Eilat-Eilot Renewable Energy Initiative and has been Israel’s leading government official in the area of renewable energy for two decades.

More than 100,000 Israelis were estimated to be displaced from their homes in southern Israel after Oct. 7. Banet has noted in prior media stories that some in Israel are eying a push to “build back better” by transforming the region into a more sustainable area. Israel has committed to reaching 30% renewable energy by 2030, though that may be difficult.

Banet said at least another 2 gigawatts of solar renewable energy could be immediately produced in one particular Israeli area based on the existing infrastructure – and eventually as much as another 8.5 gigawatts of solar energy. 

This would offer people in the area much more energy resilience, she said. “In such areas, this needs to be totally agreed upon with totally new regulation in Israel.”
 

Promoting Resilience

Victor Weiss, director of sustainability for the Israel National Security Council, said the ongoing war could have a negative impact on the global economy, the availability of budget, and the willingness of countries to allocate resources to climate issues.   

“A regional war is expected to affect fuel markets and lead to damaged supply chains” and the general instability of markets, said Weiss, who was a senior military officer and founder of the Israel Defense Force’s Environmental Unit.

“We have to build a new relationship and partnerships with the other regional countries to promote resilience,” he added.

Weiss said that Israel’s National Security Council recently defined climate issues as a strategic threat to that country’s national security. “The climate chapter was written in the National Security Council Risk Assessment and the main threats were mapped. We are working to define the threats, to formulate the national response to those threats,” he said.

An opportunity exists for Israel, Gaza and every population affected by this conflict to “go forward on the hope of an optimistic future to our region,” he said.

‘Powerful, Informative’

In closing, Prof. Diamond described the discussion as “very powerful, informative and in the end, also moving” for the audience. “There’s going to be a staggering challenge of reconstruction when this war is over, and hopefully we can get started on it as soon as possible.”

Alon Tal added, “We’ve only begun this discussion about the reconstruction. Let’s hope that very quickly we can end the destruction, the death and the suffering, and move forward to a time of renewal.”
 

The full webinar of "Environmental Lessons and Implications of the Gaza War" is available to view below.