Michael Walzer at 90: Just-War Theorist Reconsiders Gaza and the Limits of His Own Doctrine
At a recent event in Jerusalem honoring his 90th birthday, renowned philosopher Michael Walzer criticized Israel's military operations in Gaza, describing them as an unjust escalation of conflict. This statement contrasts with his views from his 1977 publication, "Just and Unjust Wars." Organized by the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute alongside the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the conference showcased Walzer condemning strategies aimed at rendering Gaza unlivable and labeling the quest for total victory as criminal. Additionally, anthropologist Khaled Furani and others have opposed Walzer's views, while he expressed a sense of disconnection from Dissent magazine regarding its reports on Gaza and Ukraine.
Key facts
- Michael Walzer turned ninety in 2025; his "Just and Unjust Wars" was published nearly fifty years earlier and remains taught at military schools including West Point.
- At a Jerusalem conference in fall 2025, Walzer said Israel's war in Gaza became unjust once a political path to defeating Hamas and freeing hostages existed.
- He called the September 2024 pager and walkie-talkie explosions in Lebanon and Syria "terrorist attacks" and "very likely war crimes" in a Times essay.
- Walzer said a prolonged siege of Gaza is unjust, invoking Maimonides' rule that a besieged city be surrounded on only three sides.
- He described himself as "radically alienated" from Dissent, the left-wing magazine he formerly co-edited.
- Khaled Furani, a professor of anthropology, called Walzer's work a "lullaby" masking Palestinian suffering.
- Walzer helped organize one of the first Vietnam teach-ins at Princeton in 1965 and co-chaired the Cambridge Neighborhood Committee on Vietnam in 1967.
- The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities hosted the conference, postponed from June to the fall.
Entities
Artists
- Michael Walzer
- Judy Borodovko Walzer
- Avishai Margalit
- Moshe Ya'alon
- Khaled Furani
- Raef Zreik
- Yael Sternhell
- J. D. Vance
- Maimonides
- Benjamin Netanyahu
Institutions
- Institute for Advanced Study
- Dissent
- Brandeis University
- Harvard University
- Princeton University
- West Point
- Haaretz
- The New York Review of Books
- The New York Times
- Jacobin
- Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
- Minerva Center for Human Rights
- Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
- Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
- Hamas
- Israel Defense Forces
- United Nations
- The New Yorker
Locations
- Princeton
- New Jersey
- United States
- Bronx
- New York
- Johnstown
- Pennsylvania
- Catalonia
- Barcelona
- Spain
- Israel
- Jerusalem
- Gaza
- West Bank
- East Jerusalem
- Sinai Peninsula
- Golan Heights
- Egypt
- Lebanon
- Syria
- Iran
- Venezuela
- Ukraine
- Russia
- Vietnam
- Korea
- Algeria
- Afghanistan
- Iraq
- Hiroshima
- Nagasaki
- Palestine