Dear Mr. President,

We are writing on behalf of the academic community of Iranian origin to urge you to intensifyyour efforts and do everything within your power to secure an immediate and sustained ceasefirein Gaza. While we condemn in no uncertain terms the Oct. 7 Hamas’s attacks on Israeli civiliansas reprehensive, we regard Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza and its projected assault on Rafah as acatalyst for human misery of a scale rarely seen in recent history waiting to unfold, withunfortunate results ranging from political turmoil to rising violence, and most crucially massiverise of refugees and displacement of millions of innocent civilians in Gaza who already live indire conditions. In the face of little or no progress made on the ceasefire, it has becomeincreasingly imperative that Washington deploys its leverage as the provider of the armamentand political protector of state of Israel. The US government should immediately demand that theIsraeli government stop the deadly attacks on Palestinian civilians and allow crucialhumanitarian aid to enter Gaza to relieve the hunger and malnutrition.

Since Israel’s assault on Gaza, which started five months ago, we have witnessed the Palestiniandeath toll surpass 31,000, two-thirds of whom are women and children. Civilian deaths andhumanitarian disaster have become matters of broad global concern as evidenced by the vote of154 nations in favor of an immediate ceasefire on several occasions. South Africa’s allegationsof genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza, which were brought before the International Court ofJustice, are based on solid evidence and compelling reasoning. Many countries, including someclose allies of the United States, have urged ways to assist civilians in Gaza who have been underIsrael’s furious aerial and ground offensive. Death by starvation, malnutrition, and dehydrationas a method of war in Gaza has placed the lives of many innocent children and pregnant womenat grave risk. While failure to make a balanced and measured decision in the Gaza War and theparadox of falling US bombs from sky on Gaza is counterproductive, providing Israel withweaponry, funding, and the political support without exercising any leverage on its war agendain Gaza is both morally and strategically unjustifiable.

Israel’s planned ground offensive in Rafah, a place where 1.4 million Palestinians have takenshelter because they were told by Israeli government that they would be safe there, will mostlikely result in an unprecedented bloodshed and human misery. It is not clear that destroyingGaza and killing civilians could terminate or contain Hamas. The fact remains that Israeliscannot simply kill or capture their way out of Gaza and hope to achieve their political goal oferadicating Hamas in the coming days, weeks, or months. We are reminded that nearly onemillion Afghans died during the Soviet intervention in the 1980s, but the massive death anddestruction wrought on Afghanistan failed to bring victory in the end.

We are writing to express our support for a permanent ceasefire as the only way to stop thekilling of thousands more innocent civilians in Gaza, and we ask for the release of hostages andpolitical prisoners, and for a sustainable political settlement. The solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in our view, is political—not military. We urge you to put on table a viable,long-term solution toward reconciling security for Israel with the Palestinian aspirations for statehood. For the time being, however, assaults on civilians must stop, and restrictions on aidand the siege of Gaza must end. We hope that you take immediate and effective action to preventthe Israeli government’s plan to attack Rafah sooner or later even as you have urged otherwise.The burden of inaction and acquiescence is likely to exacerbate, and even foment, furtherviolence and political instability in the region. The US could and should put pressure on theNetanyahu government to immediately de-escalate the conflict in Gaza and map out a waytoward two-state solution over time. For now, at least, stopping this bloodshed will represent avitally important step toward searching for a political settlement.

Thank you for your time and attention to this urgent matter.

Signatories:

Ervand Abrahamian (emeritus professor of history, CUNY)
Ali Afshari (Adjunct faculty in Engineering and applied science of school of The GeorgeWashington University)
Reza Afshari (emeritus professor, Pace University)
Fereshteh Ahmadi (University of Gävle, Sweden)
Niki Akhavan (The Catholic University of America) Shahrough Akhavi (Independent Scholar)
Kazem Alamdari (California State University, Northridge)
Samad Joseph Alavi (University of Oslo)
Reza Bavafa (University of Southern California)
Asef Bayat (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
Maziar Behrooz (San Francisco State University)
Mohammad A. Chaichian (emeritus professor, Mount Mercy University)
Manochehr Dorraj (Texas Christian University)
Nader Entessar (emeritus professor, University of South Alabama)
Aria Fani (University of Washington, Seattle)
Mansour Farhang (emeritus professor, Bennington College)
Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi (Princeton University)
Shahryar Gheibi (Siena College)
Fatemeh Haghighatjoo (Nonviolent Initiative for Democracy Inc.—NID)
Golamhossein H. Hamedani (Marquette University, Milwaukee).
Nader Hashemi (Georgetown University)
Mohammad Javaheri (Siena College)
Mohammad Ali Kadivar (Boston College)
Mohsen Kadivar (Duke University)
Mehrak Kamali-Sarvestani (Ohio State University)
Hossein Kamaly (Hartford International University)
Mehran Kamrava (Georgetown University—Doha)
Mahmood Karimi Hakak (Siena College)
Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak (emeritus professor, University of Maryland)
Fatemeh Keshavarz-Karamustafa (University of Maryland, College Park)
Ahmad Khalili, emeritus professor, Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania)
Farhad Khosrokhavar (School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences—Paris)
Ali-Akbar Mahdi (California State University, Northridge)
Farzaneh Milani (University of Virginia)
Ali Mirsepassi (ISI-New York University)
Valentine M. Moghadam (Northeastern University)
Haideh Moghissi (Professor Emerita, York University, Toronto)
Reza Mohajer (University of Hawaii)
Shadi Mokhtari (American University—Washington, DC)
Mahmood Monshipouri (San Francisco State University)
Azar Nafisi (Johns Hopkins University)
Azam Niroomand-Rad (emeritus professor, Georgetown University)
Saeed Paivandi (University of Lorraine, France)
Misagh Parsa (emeritus professor, Dartmouth College)
Nasrin Rahimieh (UC-Irvine)
Saeed Rahnema (York University, Toronto)
Ahmad Sadri (Lake Forest College)
Mahmoud Sadri (Texas Woman’s University)
Djavad Salehi-Isfahani (Virginia Tech)
Majid Sharifi (Eastern Washington University)
Iradj Sobhani (APHP and UPEC Université Paris-Est Créteil)
Bahram Tavakolian (emeritus professor, Denison University)
Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi (University of Toronto)
Nayereh Tohidi (Professor Emerita, California State University, Northridge)
Farzin Vahdat (The Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities, Massachusetts)