Exposing Indonesia’s largest Muslim organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama, and its troubling ties to Israel

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. Berkowitz is not a neutral scholar: he has openly defended Israeli military campaigns in Gaza, including operations condemned globally as violations of international law. NU’s chairperson, Yahya Cholil Staquf—known as Gus Yahya—issued a public apology, admitting a failure to conduct proper vetting. Yet this apology cannot obscure the deeper problem: a repeated pattern of engagement with Israeli actors that raises serious ethical and political questions.

NU, founded in 1926, has long promoted pluralism and interfaith dialogue. Its leaders, including former President Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur), emphasized tolerance across religions, advocating coexistence among Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews. Gus Dur visited Israel multiple times, attending forums organized by the American Jewish Committee in Washington, D.C., presenting his trips as intellectual and diplomatic initiatives rather than endorsements of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

However, NU’s engagements with Israeli actors have grown increasingly fraught. In 2018, Gus Yahya travelled to Israel to speak at a forum hosted by the Israeli Council on Foreign Relations in Jerusalem. Though framed as a personal academic visit, his official position as NU General Secretary and member of Indonesia’s Presidential Advisory Council made the trip inherently political. He met with senior Israeli officials and discussed regional geopolitics. Even when framed as dialogue, such encounters risk legitimizing ongoing violence against Palestinians.

The situation worsened in 2024, when five young Nahdliyin—members of NU-affiliated institutions including Universitas Nahdlatul Ulama Indonesia (NU University of Indonesia), PWNU Banten (NU Regional Leadership, Banten Province), PP Fatayat NU (NU’s women’s wing), and Pagar Nusa (NU-affiliated martial arts organization)—traveled to Israel and met with President Isaac Herzog. The timing was morally indefensible: Israel had begun its genocidal campaign in Gaza, killing countless Palestinians, including children. PBNU (NU Central Executive Board) claimed the trip was “personal” and not representative of the organization. Yet five visible NU members meeting with Israel’s president during active massacres cannot plausibly be neutral. This is complicity disguised as personal initiative.

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.

In Indonesia, where NU speaks for tens of millions of Muslims, the consequences are profound. By associating with actors complicit in genocide, NU risks normalizing impunity and corroding the moral foundation of the world’s largest Muslim community. Its failures reverberate far beyond Indonesia, sending a dangerous signal that moral compromise is acceptable under the guise of interfaith engagement.

NU must act—or lose all credibility. It must sever public and private ties with those who defend war crimes and unequivocally affirm Palestinian human rights. Silence or equivocation is a choice of cowardice, not prudence. Interfaith dialogue cannot become a shield for endorsing oppression.

History will not judge NU by its polished rhetoric of tolerance, but by whether it stood against complicity in genocide. For an organization built on pluralism, justice, and ethical authority, there is only one path: moral clarity. Anything less stains the conscience of millions, betrays its principles, and erodes its standing on the global stage.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.