Petition by CS & Math Laureates: Freedom for kidnapped children

[Guest post by Shafi Goldwasser, See also PDF version of document]

On the morning of Saturday, October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an attack near the Israel/Gaza border. In villages and towns near the border they went from door-to-door annihilating whole families. They killed children in front of their parents and siblings. They abused women. In a music concert in the desert, they massacred hundreds of young people and wounded thousands of others. And they took captive children, infants, elderly in wheelchairs, women and men, to be used as human shields, and worse. The attacks on civilians were planned, purposeful and documented by Hamas.

While we individually have different views about the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, we all emphatically condemn the murder, kidnapping, rape and torture of civilians. Throughout history, humanity has consistently drawn the line between acts of war and war crimes. No war should ever condone mass atrocities. No war should normalize acts of rape and torture. No war should permit the captivity of innocent young children.

The vulnerability of children in captivity is immense and unfathomable, even under the assumption that Hamas is providing them with elementary necessities. It is our duty to rally to help the innocent and the vulnerable and bring them home. We join the petition of the Nobel Laureates and call out urgently and without condition:

FREE ALL CHILDREN HOSTAGES NOW

TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE

COMPUTER SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS PRIZE WINNERS’ SIGNATURES

1. Scott Aaronson (ACM Prize in Computing Laureate)
2. Manindra Agrawal (Clay research award, Fulkerson Prize). 
3. Alfred Aho (Turing Award Laureate)
4. Sanjeev Arora (ACM Prize in Computing Laureate)
5. Artur Avila (Fields Medal Laureate)
6. Yoshua Bengio (Turing Award Laureate)
7. Charles H. Bennett (Claude E. Shannon Award, Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics)
8. David Meir Blei (ACM Prize in Computing Laureate)
9. Manuel Blum (Turing Award Laureate)
10. Dan Boneh (ACM Prize in Computing Laureate)
11. Gilles Brassard (Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics)
12. Mark Braverman (Abacus Medal Laureate)
13. Eric Brewer (ACM Prize in Computing Laureate)
14. Ed Catmull (Turing Award Laureate)
15. Vint Cerf (Turing Award Laureate)
16. Alain Connes (Fields Medal Laureate)
17. Jeff Dean (ACM Prize in Computing Laureate and IEEE John von Neumann Medal)
18. Simon Donaldson (Fields Medal Laureate and Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics)
19. Jack Dongarra (Turing Award Laureate)
20. Alexei Efros (ACM Prize in Computing Laureate)
21. Alessio Figalli (Fields Medal Laureate)
22. Michael Freedman (Fields Medal Laureate)
23. Hillel Furstenberg (Abel Prize Laureate)
24. Sanjay Ghemawat (ACM Prize in Computing)
25. Shafi Goldwasser (Turing Award Laureate)
26. Martin Hairer (Fields Medal Laureate)
27. John Hennesey (Turing Award Laureate)
28. Geoffrey Hinton (Turing Award Laureate)
29. June E. Huh (Fields Medal Laureate)
30. Frans Kaashoek (ACM Prize in Computing Laureate)
31. Yael Kalai (ACM Prize in Computing Laureate)
32. Alan Kay (Turing Award Laureate)
33. Richard Karp (Turing Award Laureate)
34. Daphna Koller (ACM Prize in Computing Laureate, ACM AAAI Allen Newell Award, MacArthur Fellowship)
35. Butler Lampson (Turing Award Laureate)
36. Robert Langlands (Abel Prize, Companion of the Order of Canada)
37. Yann LeCun (Turing Award Laureate)
38. Elon Lindenstrauss (Fields Medal Laureate)
39. Pierre-Louis Lions (Fields Medal Laureate)
40. Barbara Liskov (Turing Award Laureate and IEEE John von Neumann Medal)
41. László Lovász (Abel Prize Laureate)
42. Grigory Margulis  (Fields Medal Laureate, Abel Priza Laureate)
43. James Maynard (Fields Medal Laureate)
44. Robert Metcalfe (Turing Award Laureate)
45. Silvio Micali (Turing Award Laureate)
46. Shigefumi Mori (Fields Medal Laureate)
47. Andrei Okounkov (Fields Medal Laureate)
48. David Patterson (Turing Award Laureate)
49. Shwetak Patel (ACM Prize in Computing Laureate)
50. Judea Pearl (Turing Award Laureate)
51. Michael Rabin (Turing Award Laureate)
52. Alexander Razborov (Nevanlinna Prize Laureate)
53. Ron Rivest (Turing Award Laureate)
54. Amit Sahai (National Academy of Sciences Held Prize)
55. Dana Scott (Turing Award Laureate)
56. Peter Scholze (Fields Medal Laureate)
57. Adi Shamir (Turing Award Laureate)
58. Dan Spielman (Nevanlinna Prize Laureate, Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics)
59. Endre Szemerédi (Abel Prize)
60. Terence Tao (Fields Medal Laureate, Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics)
61. Robert Tarjan (Turing Award Laureate, Nevanlinna Prize Laureate)
62. Ken Thompson (Turing Award)
63. Karen Uhlenbeck (Abel Prize)
64. Leslie Valiant (Turing Award Laureate and Nevanlinna Prize Laureate)
65. Maryna Viazovska (Fields Medal Laureate)
66. Cedric Villani (Fields Medal Laureate)
67. Avi Wigderson (Nevanlinna Prize Laureate, Abel Prize Laureate)
68. Efim Zelmanov (Fields Medal Laureate)