Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi founded the Harvard chapter of Chabad in 1997 and remains president of the organization. He also serves as the Jackie and Omri Dahan Harvard Chabad Jewish Chaplain at Harvard. Zarchi sat down with The HPR to discuss his experience navigating the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attack, war in Gaza, and subsequent campus demonstrations as a prominent member of the Jewish community.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Harvard Political Review: In addition to being the founder and president of Harvard Chabad, you serve as a Jewish chaplain to many Harvard students. Can you please detail how your role has been shaped by October 7th and the subsequent campus events?
Hirschy Zarchi: There’s no question that it’s changed. When, even though I would say pre-October 7th, and I would say for at least a year or two, we noticed a very recognizable change in the culture at Harvard in the way in which students relate to Jewish students at times, and certainly to Israeli students. What has happened post-October 7th, it certainly unearthed and brought to the fore an antisemitism that exists, and an anti-Israel approach and worldview by many on this campus, both students and faculty, in ways that were shocking.
We always understood and saw a fringe element that was hostile and hateful. And like I said, even before October 7th, we saw a change in the way even students outside what I would call ‘the fringe’ in the way they were relating to Israeli students and even Jewish students, and certainly Jewish students who identify proudly with Israel. But that was a result of a culture where it became socially costly to be seen and to be identified with an element of the community. But what happened, like I said, post-October 7th, where just in the center of campus, just openly, without any apology, without any contextualization, just outright hostility and hateful chants, calling for stuff like “Intifada,” calling for Israel to be free of Jews, that it should be Arab, “from river to the sea,” stuff like that, that hateful rhetoric that followed that initial statement.
You asked me how my role has changed. It has been to comfort a community, who were experiencing, young students, including freshmen, 18 years old, who were experiencing hate for the first time, personally directed at them in ways that they’ve never experienced in their life. So that’s sort of one element.
Not to mention, living through the trauma, the horror of the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. So many in our community were in deep shock and pain from that. So there’s a sense of, as we’re all coping with it and the rise of antisemitism around the world, including America and on the Harvard campus, taking on the responsibility to comfort students, give them strength — particularly when they not only saw it from their peers, but even those who are responsible for their well being, whether it’s proctors or faculty who not only weren’t there for them, but often participated in and validated some of this hateful rhetoric.
Members of the Jewish community who, their entire life, are committed to fighting bigotry and hatred and racism and homophobia, discrimination of any kind, fighting for equality of all people. That’s the world they lived in, and they were the allies of all these communities. To be in a moment where they, their people are being massacred, and the world supports it, and for their allies or friends — who they have been with their entire life — now not only not be there for them, but to participate in the racism and the hatred towards them. So that’s been a sort of a double whammy, completely disrupted their entire identity. Because not only did they feel a personal hate toward their people, themselves, but all those who they considered to be their friends and allies — they realized they don’t have friends. That the very people who they were shoulder to shoulder with, who they supported, who they were allies with for their causes, who they considered friends — all of the sudden, to wake up and see all the people who you thought were your friends, who you had shared values and a common world with, were not who you thought them to be. That was very devastating and completely shook the core of their whole identity and their whole place in society.
So you asked me, has anything changed? So you can imagine that in terms of comforting, and being there as a mentor, as a guide to students in our community. And on top of that, trying to be a voice to challenge the community, both students, faculty and administration to respond and address the ugliness that was exposed and unearthed, that came to the fore.
As I’m sure you know, but to remind everyone, that this started during Israel, during the massacre, as Jews were being massacred, as they were roaming through the kibbutzim. The dead weren’t even buried yet, the beheadings and the rape and the murders and that torture, while it was going on, we experienced and witnessed and heard calls on our campus accusing Israel, justifying those attacks, validating them, and not only that, but blaming the victim for them.
So obviously, immediately from that moment, we already saw it as our responsibility to speak to the broader community and certainly to the leadership that was initially very silent and quiet on this to help them understand the responsibility they have at this moment to help them fulfill their roles and honor their responsibility as leaders of an educational enterprise, to actually educate the students about not only facts, but about foundational morality and ethics.
HPR: How do you balance your personal views about the conflict with the wide range of opinions that the Jewish community does have with respect to the war in Gaza and the encampment? For example, there’s an organization here at Harvard called “Harvard Jews for Palestine,” some Jewish students at Harvard were reported to be participating in the encampment, and other Jewish students maintain staunch pro-Israel beliefs. So, again, how do you balance your personal views with being a mentor and a guide to those students whose views do not coalesce with your own?
HZ: I can speak more generally. The specifics of what you’re referring to, I know nothing of. I shouldn’t say I know nothing — I know little of.
What I do know is that there are many Jewish students who told me that they saw people who were participating in something, whether the name was “Jews for Palestine” or “Jews for Gaza,” who were in fact not Jewish, that there were non-Jewish students who were hanging up signs in the dorms under the banner “Jews for Palestine.” And when they were challenged, “what are you doing? You’re not Jewish,” who’d say “oh we’re allies of the Jews.”
I will respond to the specific question, but I think this is a moment to highlight that there has been lots of misrepresentation and highjacking of the Jewish community by those who are not Jewish, trying to use the Jewish community to sanctify, to legitimize their positions. That’s a separate issue that shouldn’t get lost in this moment. That is not to dismiss the idea that there are some, but from what I understand it’s a tiny, tiny number. Very, very few.
To get to your question, this is not a moment where it’s difficult to balance my personal views with others. My views aren’t personal. I don’t consider them personal. What happened on October 7th, I don’t see a plurality of views. You know, there were murderers, killers, rapists, terrorists. There’s not more than one view.
Someone was saying, I was astonished, someone was telling me how they were trying to schedule an event for a reunion around October 7th, and someone said, “Well, you need to have someone from the other side,” and my reaction to that is, if you do an event on the Holocaust, does that require you to have a Nazi also participate in the panel? There’s no other side to speak of.
So, no, not difficult, not difficult for me to speak about October 7th and its aftermath and to be considerate of other views when most of what we have been hearing on this campus that would be another view, an alternative view, is a view that is supportive of terrorism, just outright lies, and slander or misrepresentation of facts.
You can have legitimate views of how to settle a conflict amongst Israel and Palestine. There’s room to have a discussion. People see it differently, and it’s been a long debated issue with strong views and a multiplicity of views. But this is not a moment where it’s difficult to speak with clarity or even to speak in a manner that needs to take in consideration what the Nazis or what Hamas or Hezbollah or its supporters think and how they see it. In most cases, it’s either that they’re terrorists or supporters of terrorism, and in the best case scenario they’re sadly ignorant and manipulated, and are functioning as useful idiots to the hateful people.
The work is not so much balancing the views, the question is more about what can we do to take innocent, well-meaning students who are manipulated or ignorant or are given a narrow set, a limited set of facts, and react in a certain way. How can we do a better job at educating them about the facts, and about what they’re sadly, sometimes, supporting — whether it’s calling for the destruction of Israel or justifying the murder of Jews or something along those lines?
HPR: The Gaza solidarity encampment in Harvard Yard recently came to an end. But on day one of the encampment, you vocalized strong criticism of the protesters, calling upon the university to “Remove these Jew haters and Hamas lovers.” However, with 35,000 Palestinians having been killed since the beginning of the war, according to the Gazan Health Ministry, some do view the encampment as simply calling necessary attention to an ongoing humanitarian crisis. Where do you draw the line between human rights activism for those suffering in Gaza and antisemitism?
HZ: So there’s two things here. There’s the facts that you presented, such as, for example, the 35,000 people killed, that you attributed that fact to what entity?
HPR: The Gazan Health Ministry.
HZ: Why don’t we just shorten it to Hamas? Because that’s what it is, right? We wouldn’t call it “Oh, the German Health Ministry” at the time of the Nazis. It would be the Nazi numbers. These are Hamas numbers. Let’s just clarify.
Even that number, recently, you may have seen, the United Nations themselves cut the numbers of those civilians in half, but yet people are still using those numbers. So to me those numbers, I never even paid attention, I wasn’t alarmed by that number, because it comes from Hamas. I can’t listen to anything that comes from Hamas as accurate.
Particularly, when Israel has been stating that 13, I think now 14,000, of those were the terrorists. And I’ve never till this day read anything that suggests that Hamas or the Health Ministry, as you refer to it, disputed the fact that 14,000 of those killed were the terrorists that Israel describes. So if the UN cut that number in half, and Israel says that half of that is terrorists, and then the other ones, you know, the other women and children, we know that both young men and young women till the age of 18 are considered children, even if they’re holding bombs and grenades and rifles in their hands. So I don’t know anything about those numbers. That’s part of what I was saying, it’s galvanizing and enraging people with misrepresentation of facts. It’s a very important piece to all of this.
Now, having said everything I just said may be very, very clear. If it was only one child, one innocent young child who was killed in Gaza, that’s a tragedy, and it’s something to mourn, and it’s something to fight for, and to protest. I want to be very clear about that. What I’m questioning is the data, the information, and the way it’s presented.
Now having said that, I called for their removal — even you asked me specifically that I called them “Hamas lovers and anti …” Look, their protests were not about the Palestinians. As much of their rhetoric and their signage was about hate, about intifada, about “from the river to the sea,” removing Jews from Israel, showing a map without Israel. So this was not, let’s not misrepresent what this encampment was. This wasn’t an encampment that was here solely to talk about the poor, innocent children that were being killed in Gaza tragically, horrifically, okay? As much of the rhetoric, and the paraphernalia, and the art was about showing the elimination of Israel, calling for the destruction of Israel, chanting for it, calling for an uprising, the intifada, so that’s important.
But I’m going to pause there and go back to when I was talking about the numbers further. What I left out is, in terms of misrepresentation, it’s so important — again, the UN cut the numbers in half. Israel said that 13,000 or 14,000, those were terrorists, the health ministry, or Hamas, never disputed that number till this day that I’ve seen.
The fact that if you’re a 17 year old with a rifle, you are listed in the numbers as a child, and maybe even most importantly, when Israel was accused of bombing a hospital, which the whole world then was thankfully confronted with the images about that lie, one of the many lies being told: They said there were 500 Palestinian women and children killed then, right?
So at least one event we know, which was later proved to be the errant rockets of Hamas, in one event, Israel was guilty when it was 500 people. It was one rocket by Hamas kills 500 Palestinians.
We know that a very, very substantial number of their rockets failed to hit their target. So how many of those other thousands, whatever that number is, we don’t have accuracy, the UN just said it’s 50%, how many of those were actually killed by Hamas? By Hamas’s rockets not hitting their targets? If they cared for the Palestinians, the encampment would be condemning Hamas for the thousands of people that Hamas directly murdered through their missiles targeting Israel that fell short and murdered their own children, and then the others for putting their children as human shields, right?
So Hamas deliberately killed — if there were thousands of people killed in Gaza, Hamas deliberately fired rockets that they knew may kill their own children, because they don’t have accuracy, and in other cases deliberately fired rockets from within the residences and the buildings where people live where they know they’re going to be targeted to use their children as human shields. So you’re asking why I call them Hamas lovers and why I called them hateful of Israel? Because if you love the Palestinian children, you’d be going after those who are responsible for killing thousands of them. And that’s Hamas, by its own admission, right? We know that one rocket killed 500.
So I stand by everything I said, of course. It’s very, very clear from the rhetoric and from the facts that the data was all false. So much of what they were presenting was either false and the other half was simply targeting and hateful and calling for the destruction of Israel, not about the human rights that you’re discussing.
Now, the other piece of it is the actual behavior. The encampment, from its very beginning, included self-appointed, yellow vested police force that intimidated, harassed and would stalk students. We have numerous reports from students at Harvard who displayed Zionist clothing because they wore an Israel shirt or an IDF shirt or whatnot and were seen as somehow a threatening entity, so they were followed, stalked, including at night. And I’m not a lawyer, but I’m told it is actually criminal on some level, it’s a form of assault to stalk somebody.
So you’re talking about an encampment that included people who were functioning as police and were harassing, physically harassing, intimidating — which is a form of assault, to stalk. The chanting of hateful rhetoric, including calling for the murder of Israelis, in the form of the Intifada, doing so at a time when freshmen in the dorm are meant to be at home, it’s their home. You’re a rising senior. Those kids actually live in the yard. The fact that outside your window, you have to read signs calling for the murder of Jews, justifying the murder of Jews, and that’s supposed to be your home? Students were complaining about the fact that they were trying to study or take a nap during the day, and there were disruptions. So there’s time, place, and manner — I mean, you know this? You know all this?
Students who are violating every rule of the university, including disrupting the college life and the academic life of their peers. Of course, they should have been removed immediately from day one, by disrupting the university life of their peers, by engaging in what may even be considered criminal activity, and certainly, the hateful chants, and hateful rhetoric and the misrepresentation of facts. For all these reasons, make it very, very clear that the group was everything but people who were fighting for human rights, but they were sadly manipulated with an agenda that at its core displays a hate to Jews, and an anti-Israel approach as opposed to caring for the Palestinian children, who apparently, if it turns out that Hamas is killing most of them, then they don’t have a reason to protest. It only matters if they can make a false claim that it’s Israel who’s responsible for it.
HPR: There are sources outside of the numbers coming out of Gaza, though, such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, or the UN itself, that do indicate there is a humanitarian catastrophe occurring in Gaza. And the Encampment has responded to that specific humanitarian catastrophe, there have been specific moments where the protesters have been focused on that catastrophe. Do you view those instances as legitimate forms of protest?
HZ: I view them as antisemitic. And the reason why I’ve view them as antisemitic is because if they care about human rights, and if it was about the plight of humans that are fighting for, we would hear them speak of the hostages that are being denied, that are being raped, that are being murdered, that are being denied food, that are being held. We don’t hear that, so it’s not about human rights. They support the murder of Jews. Israel is fulfilling its obligation and coming to try to retrieve its hostages, and to kill the terrorists who are still firing rockets at its hospitals and schools and its civilians.
So absolutely, I certainly recognize the plight of civilians in Gaza, but that’s absolutely 100 percent at the hands and the responsibility of Hamas, who started this war. Who are still, as we speak, holding children, women, and elderly hostage, and Israel has an obligation to come and retrieve them.
So if you’re telling me this is a demonstration for humans and they’re fighting for human rights, if they would talk about the hostages, and they would scream for, and call for, the release of those hostages, which would end this catastrophe, then we would know these are legitimate, informed sensible kids, but the fact that they’re not demonstrates that something is profoundly wrong, profoundly wrong with their humanity.
When the way this whole thing started by the murder of 1,200 civilians, and the taking of 250 people hostage, not a word from any of these encampments or demonstrators. A protest or a civil disobedience is only when it occurs in a war that Hamas starts and wants to hold Jews captive, and Israel responds to, is very, very bizarre. It’s very, very bizarre.
By the way, there’s Americans being held hostage, five different faith communities, that have multiple nationalities, but complete disregard. I would say it’s a stunning display of not only ignorance, but very deranged thinking. You know, sitting there with some kind of a moral sense, and being silent and worse, ignoring the Jewish hostages, calling for the destruction of Israel, and then claiming that you’re here for human rights. It’s a very strange, very strange phenomena that we’re observing. Something very sick about it, I would say.
HPR: You’ve been very outspoken throughout this conflict, at a time when many would argue it was easier to stay silent. What compelled you to speak up, even at the risk of your personal safety?
HZ: It actually would be more difficult to stay silent. It increasingly is easier to speak out. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I don’t know how people of good conscience stay quiet when you listen to chants that call for the murder of Jews, and you stay silent. The least one could do is condemn it, and protest its ugliness and its hatefulness, and call for its removal. Particularly, when it does so in a manner that intimidates, threatens, and harasses other students, while at the same time disrupting the university and violating every rule that the university has in place to ensure that this is a place of learning and growth.
HPR: You’ve interfaced with the Harvard administration frequently since October 7, including a public address to former President Claudine Gay before her resignation. If you could send a message directly to the Harvard administration — including interim President Alan Garber — what would you say to them?
HZ: Follow their conscience and do what they know is the right thing to do. And to not be intimidated by faculty. Specifically, faculty who have shown zero moral clarity and compass in this moment, and instead of functioning as role models to students, have egged them on and allowed ignorance and darkness and hate to pervade their minds and behavior.
