The current war with Iran reminds us of the existential threat under which Israel continues to live. For Israelis, awareness of this threat has obviously never faded, regularly rekindled by attacks from various armed groups whose power matrix is Iran, the torchbearer of the desire to destroy the Jewish state, which largely dominates opinion in the countries of the region. For Jews in the diaspora, this threat has been felt every day since October 7, through the unbridled demonstrations of anti-Zionism, which has made this desire for destruction its own under the guise of fighting colonialism. The slogan “Free Palestine,” when uttered with the rage to destroy the Jewish state, has the same resonance as the official Iranian discourse, which is accompanied by actions to acquire the weapons needed to achieve its ends. For several decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has asserted itself as the global center of international antisemitism, a place where a synthesis of antizionism and Holocaust denial is developed and disseminated, arguing that the “Zionist entity” is illegitimate because it is based on the ‘myth’ of the Shoah, and tirelessly concludes that destroying it will truly and beneficially accomplish what was until then only a fiction of the “West.”
Thus, the entire Jewish world is uniting in this new moment of trial. It is drawing closer together during these nights of anguish, some in shelters, others glued to the news. In each case, however, the conviction remains that Jewish survival comes at this price, since the very existence of Israel is at stake due to the real capabilities of its enemy. In each case, the link with October 7, which had violently reactivated this sense of existential threat and the need to survive, is obvious.
However, we must face the fact that this obvious truth is not shared by everyone. It is not only confronted by its declared opponents, the militant anti-Zionists. It is obscured in the general opinion by the conduct of the war in Gaza and Israeli policy. By transforming a justified and necessary response to the aggression of October 7 into a murderous war, terrible for the…
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As Israel's operation to decapitate the Tehran regime and target its nuclear program continues, triggering a response across the entire territory of the Jewish state, Bruno Karsenti and Danny Trom question the political significance of this major turning point in the Middle East conflict. Compared to the distortion of Zionism represented by the current conduct of the war in Gaza, the war against Iran takes on a whole new meaning, both for Israelis and for the entire Jewish world.
From June 13 to 15, the first anti-Zionist Jewish congress was held in Vienna, aiming to give voice to fierce opponents of the Zionist abomination. From the Austrian capital, and in the name of the memory of the Shoah, the slogan “Neither Herzl nor Hitler” was chanted in unison, as if the two were ultimately one and the same. Is this moral “clarity” sufficient to illuminate the political path ahead? Our correspondent Liam Hoare's report suggests not: all is not clear among the anti-Zionist Jews, who were joined for the occasion by their allies Roger Waters and Rima Hassan.
Who, as a child, has never dreamed of discovering a secret lineage, an obscure origin that would answer the nagging question of identity? Ubiquitous in fiction, this trope of the “family saga”, well identified by Freud, sometimes intersects with a semblance of reality. It is from this tenuous junction point that Romain Moor investigates the subject of those who discover themselves to be Marranos long after the fact.
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The antisemitism that hangs in the air today, to the point of making it unbreathable, is primarily a matter of signs that we learn to recognize. Signs that must be deciphered, but which, for those with memory, appear shrouded in the ominous halo of the obvious. The testimony that Boris Schumatsky gives us in this text reminds us that this world saturated with disturbing signs has the power to suffocate us. It therefore raises the question – what is the meaning of the fight we are waging against it?
In Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History, Steven J. Zipperstein revisits the 1903 massacre in Kichinev, a local event that became a global trauma in the modern Jewish consciousness. More than just an account of violence, his investigation reveals how this pogrom—widely reported, interpreted, and mythologized—shaped contemporary Jewish history: it fueled the rise of Zionism, sparked global mobilization, inspired literature and the press, and forged a lasting paradigm of Jewish vulnerability. Using an approach that combines microhistory and cultural analysis, the American historian dismantles simplistic narratives, questions distortions of memory, and reveals how a provincial tragedy crystallized the major political, social, and symbolic tensions of 20th-century Jewry.
In February 2024, Gabriel Abensour opened a debate in K. on the state of contemporary French Judaism, lamenting its lukewarmness and the neglect of its spiritual heritage. After David Haziza and Julien Darmon, it is now Jérémie Haddad’s turn to offer a friendly critique of the diagnosis proposed. Should we really regret a bygone era, when the present is full of signs of the vitality of a French Judaism that knows how to demonstrate its uniqueness in relation to the Anglo-Saxon and Israeli worlds?
Since the attack on October 7 and Israel’s war in Gaza, the word “genocide” has become a touchstone in public debate. A symbol of uncompromising commitment for some, it is no longer a matter of law, but an absolute moral imperative. In this article, Matthew Bolton analyzes the shift in meaning of this term—from legal accusation to ontological condemnation—and shows how its use, fueled by the theory of “settler colonialism,” leads to cutting off any possibility of political action against the war of destruction being waged by the Netanyahu government in Gaza. For by positing that Israel is acting on a logic of annihilation intrinsic to its very existence, the equation “Israel = genocide” becomes the axiom of an ideology that rejects any political solution to the conflict on principle.
To keep the memory alive of the great historian Pierre Nora, who passed away on Monday, June 2, alive, we are republishing a text by Danny Trom—originally published in La France en récits—which explores the echoes between Nora’s Rethinking France project and Yerushalmi’s Zakhor. Two fundamentally different, even opposing, approaches to memory, yet both addressing the question of Jewish emancipation in the modern nation and what remains of their historical consciousness when the Republic fails to keep its promises.
Milena Jesenská was much more than the heroine of the passionate correspondence she had with Kafka: she was a brilliant journalist, a free and committed woman who became a ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ in 1994. With her intelligence and strength of character, she captivated Kafka, inspiring him to write some of his finest letters. She also captivated Margarete Buber-Neumann, with whom she was deported to Ravensbrück and to whom she dedicated a splendid book-portrait. On the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of Milena’s death, Christine Lecerf expressed her admiration for the woman whom Kafka wanted “to carry in his arms out of the world”.
Israeli journalist and former reporter for Yediot Aharonot and Haaretz, Meron Rapoport co-founded the initiative A Land for All with Palestinian Honi Al-Mashni, which proposes a unique solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: two fully sovereign states, but linked by a confederation, with Jerusalem as a shared capital, an open border, and a negotiated right of return for both sides. In this interview, Rapoport looks back on his personal journey, his break with the paradigm of separation, and the need to think beyond the logic of exclusion and toward a future based on sharing, reciprocity, and democracy.
As the situation in Gaza worsens and the Israeli political debate becomes increasingly radicalized, any plan for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems out of reach. Yet many are working to prepare for the future. One political project, A Land for All – Two States, One Homeland, deserves special attention. It proposes two sovereign states linked by a confederation, each recognizing the national legitimacy of the other and organizing coexistence throughout the disputed territory. In a context marked by military deadlock, democratic fatigue, and the rise of anti-Zionist interpretations in Europe, including of this project, what can we make of such a utopian construct?
As Sweden is marking 250 years of Jewish life, the reactions to the October 7th massacre, the war in Gaza and the tone of the rhetoric in the public debate are reasons to be concerned about Swedish antisemitism. But what is the true extent of this scourge, what is its impact on Sweden’s Jewish community, and how is it being addressed by the authorities? By placing these issues in a broader historical context, David Stavrou’s investigation, which we are publishing as part of our partnership with the DILCRAH, seeks to answer these questions.
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