This morning we woke up to the news we have been waiting for for two years. The hostages are coming back and a ceasefire will be put into place. Mixed in with an immense sense of relief and many hopes for the future is a strong sense of loss and pain for the past two years, which has been well documented in our pages in that time. Even if things seem to be moving towards a better future, this does not mean that, as the fog of war clears, we can dispense with making a diagnosis of what has happened and where it is leading us.
Two days ago marked two years since then. Since what? Since a massacre that took place there, in Israel, but which nevertheless involves us here in Europe. However, what we Europeans are is clearly no longer obvious. What happened on October 7 remains somewhat unclear, because the European community that found itself involved immediately became divided over what it had just experienced collectively. The commemorations and demonstrations that took place yesterday across Europe once again bore witness to this radical division. Was October 7 a new occurrence of Islamist terrorism, or the beginning of the destruction of Gaza? Did we witness an episode in the Palestinian people’s struggle for liberation, or the greatest antisemitic massacre since the Shoah, immediately followed here by a resurgence of hatred toward Jews? Europe is hesitating, and in this hesitation it is putting at stake what it is and what the future of its policy will be. For the past two years, K. has sought to assess October 7 as a European event, but also to examine what its aftermath has revealed about the evolution of Israel and its relations with the diaspora and the international…
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October 7 did not only reopen the wound of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it also revived a fault line buried in the Western consciousness, particularly in Europe. The event laid bare the link between the history of the Middle East and that of the continent that scrutinizes its explosions. For October 7 was not only imported into the debates: it was reflected upon, revealing the internal crisis of a Europe uncertain of its post-Shoah and post-colonial legacy, and now divided between three irreconcilable narratives—the Western-oriented, the anti-colonial, and specifically the European. At the heart of this divide are two haunting questions: What remains of Europe if it can no longer recognize what the resurgence of antisemitism means, here and there? But also, what remains of Zionism as a European project if its response to antisemitism in terms of the rights of peoples eludes it just as much?
What is “traumatic invalidation”? According to psychologists Miri Bar-Halpern and Jaclyn Wolfman, it is a concept that could adequately describe the subjective effects of October 7 on the psyche of many Jews. Their important work is presented here by clinical psychologist Céline Masson.
In this short text, originally published in the New York Times, Israeli writer Etgar Keret discusses the rift that war has created in his society, to the point of making communication impossible.
While the Polish state continues to systematically deny Polish responsibility for the Holocaust and engages in a continuous effort to distort memory, two eminent specialists on these issues, Jan and Katarzyna Grabowski, are sounding the alarm and calling for transparency in memory policy.
In a New York yeshiva, a young student scarred by the Six-Day War decrees that Talmudic law prohibits collateral damage. His friend, a not-so-innocent narrator, recounts the ensuing adventures, with their share of unexpected consequences. Through this novella, which reads like a coming-of-age novel, Elie Hirsch introduces us to the eccentric charm of the yeshiva world, against a backdrop of teenage misadventures.
Is being Jewish a pretense, a masquerade? Caught up in the eccentric merry-go-round between two beggars, Ruben Honigmann enjoys being thrown off balance, to the point of making his identity falter.
Yes by Nadav Lapid electrified Cannes and French critics. Hailed as both a political pamphlet and a cathartic confession, the film nevertheless raises a question: what exactly are we applauding in this work that is considered radical? Behind the cinematic object, it is the discourse of the media-savvy Israeli director—sometimes embracing the role of deconstructed sabra, sometimes that of prophet of doom or visionary poet—that fascinates French critics.
Between staunch supporters and fierce detractors, recognition of the State of Palestine crystallizes sharply divided positions. Each side’s arguments are defensible—as long as they aim to protect both Israel’s security and the Palestinians’ right to self-determination—but the challenge here is to understand what such a gesture would actually achieve: would a declaration of principle have consequences for the future?
The Institute for Jewish Policy Research is a British institute whose mission is to study and support Jewish life in Europe. In this interview, Jonathan Boyd, its director, discusses the major challenges facing European Judaism in the midst of change, and considers how to measure and understand the rise of antisemitism.
After the Brusselmans affair, the Flemish magazine HUMO has struck again… This time, it is the medieval antisemitic trope of the “Jewish butcher” that has been revived by a cartoon by the duo Kama & Seele. Joël Kotek, historian and president of the Jonathas Institute, looks back at the history and current state of antisemitic imagery in the Belgian and international press.
While messianism undoubtedly represents the most serious internal threat to Israel’s future, it nevertheless comes in many forms. Perle Nicolle-Hasid and Sylvaine Bulle examine its various currents here, starting with a fundamental divergence: the question of the relationship to realized Zionism, i.e., to the state. But whether it is the realists seeking to make the state a tool of messianism, or the purists detaching themselves from it to live according to ancestral Israel, the present of redemption overwhelms the horizon of Zionism.
Among the political soap operas of the summer, the exchange of letters between Benjamin Netanyahu and Emmanuel Macron replayed the classic scene of a dialogue of the deaf. Beyond the pantomime spectacle, who can really say what the subject of their correspondence was? Gérard Bensussan attempts to decipher the reasons behind a misunderstanding that is particularly symptomatic of the current political situation.
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