Recently in Indonesia, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the country’s largest Muslim organization, has found itself at the center of a moral and political controversy that demands scrutiny. In August 2025, Peter Berkowitz, a pro-Israel academic affiliated with the Hoover Institution, was invited to lecture at NU’s National Leadership Academy in Jakarta.

The Berkowitz invitation in 2025 intensifies concern. His writings, including Israel and the Struggle over the International Laws of War (2012), explicitly defend Israel’s attacks, including critiques of UN investigations like the Goldstone Report. Hosting him at NU’s premier leadership academy, in the midst of ongoing atrocities, signals tacit endorsement. NU’s language of pluralism and tolerance rings hollow when it amplifies voices justifying mass violence.

Defenders argue that these engagements are intellectual exercises or dialogue. Pro-Israel activist Monique Rijkers, founder of Indonesia’s Hadassah Foundation, praised the 2024 trip as a way to understand Israel’s perspective. NU scholars have framed these encounters as opportunities for interfaith learning. But context matters. When interlocutors defend killings of civilians, dialogue becomes a moral hazard. It is no longer academic curiosity—it is ethical compromise.

NU’s repeated apologies are not just inadequate—they are morally hollow. For decades, this organization has prided itself on defending the oppressed and upholding ethical leadership. Yet time and again, it has granted legitimacy to those who defend mass murder. This is not dialogue. This is betrayal. Engagement with perpetrators of atrocities is not pluralism—it is complicity, and history will remember it as such.