When the political horizon seems blocked by a present with no way out, taking a step back from utopia opens up new possibilities to build on. This week, K. wanted to highlight the project “A Land for All – Two States, One Homeland”. After meeting two of its pillars last year in Israel, Israeli Palestinian Rula Hardal and Israeli Jew Meron Rappaport, we are publishing an interview in which the latter presents the outlines and challenges of the project to Elie Petit, accompanied by an introductory text written by Julia Christ, Bruno Karsenti, and Danny Trom. At a time when the morbid confrontation between anti-Zionism and the Jewish far right is locking everyone into fantasies of mutual annihilation, we believe it is vital to give a platform to any perspective that allows us to think about how legitimate demands can be articulated on the basis of their differences. Obviously, as utopian as the idea of a confederation of two sovereign nation-states may seem in the current situation, this perspective is nonetheless based on a realistic understanding of the conflict and its issues of mutual recognition. First, recognition of a legitimate attachment to the same land. Second, recognition of the trauma that the conflict has caused to both sides, which requires each side to acknowledge this trauma, without which it is impossible to enter into a genuine political resolution process. The eminently pragmatic intuition that guides this utopia is, in short, that it is in the conflict between two legitimate national claims that the prospect of integration within a shared political space emerges. Maintaining a critical edge will therefore require fighting against inevitable attempts to obscure…
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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?
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.
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”.
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.
At the 2025 Primo Levi Prize award ceremony in Genoa, the great American writer Jonathan Safran Foer delivered a powerful speech on memory, responsibility, and contemporary indifference. In a clear nod to Levi’s thinking, he evoked Gaza, called for moral vigilance in the face of global suffering, urged us to turn turmoil into ethical strength rather than weakness, and warned against becoming shadows of ourselves.
Three biographical excerpts from a Jewish lineage, transplanted between Algeria and France, are what philosopher François-David Sebbah offers us here. He himself is at the end of the story, in the guise of a child. It is by becoming a child again that he has written the book “His Lives in Africa”, from which these few pages are taken. He did so in order to better understand and reveal what has been secretly preserved and displaced within him from his eminently French Sephardic memory. We see that he himself is suspended in the manner of a paragraph attached to a longer text, impossible to unify, however, and therefore destined to appear in fragments.
How did a classic work of Jewish thought written in Arabic in the 12th century, which claims the absolute superiority of Jews and Hebrew, come to be cited by both the Israeli far right and the most radical fringes of anti-Zionism? To dispel this mystery and the misreadings of this text, David Lemler immersed himself in Yehuda Halevi’s Kuzari. His interpretation reveals an unexpected utopia, that of the Jewish state of the Khazars, whose critical function could help us escape contemporary aporias.
On May 8, Europe celebrates its rebirth following the defeat of the Nazis. But can Jews participate in this moment of jubilation that unites European consciousness? Through the experiences of playwright Ionas Turkov on May 8, 1945, Stéphane Bou examines the disconnect between the narratives and emotions of “the world” and those of the Jews. What place can the history of the Shoah find in the grand triumphal narrative of victory and European unity?
On May 1, cries of “dirty genocidal Zionists” and violence from hooded far-left activists targeted not only Jérôme Guedj, who is becoming accustomed to such treatment, but also, for the first time, several elected officials present at the Socialist Party’s stand. Bruno Karsenti provides a timely clarification and analysis: the logic of contemporary anti-Zionism does not merely lead to antisemitism; it is irresistibly anti-socialist.
From the unpaved streets of Sziget to the affluent suburbs of Manchester, Stephen Pogany traces the remarkable, often harrowing journey of Nóra Platschek, a Jewish woman whose quiet resilience defied war, exile, and loss. Through family records, personal memories, and historical insight, this deeply human narrative challenges antisemitic myths and reclaims the dignity of ordinary lives swept up in extraordinary times.
All massacres resemble each other when one deliberately decides to dispense with the analytical precision that would make it possible to differentiate between them. But where does this love of hackneyed comparisons, so common today, have its roots? Stephan Malinowski sets out to identify the intersecting and paradoxical intellectual lineages that give rise to this great confusion.
By coincidence, Danny Trom had planned his family vacation in Seville during Holy Week. Lost amid the processions of penitents, and with Xanax proving insufficient to counteract what was undoubtedly an atavistic Jewish anxiety, he improvised himself as a journalist covering this archaic experience of Catholicism.
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