The truce between Israel and Hamas, which recent developments suggest may be short-lived, is making for a deplorable spectacle. On both sides, the grim reality of the situation is obscured by boastful proclamations. On the Hamas side, they cry “victory” over a field of ruins and corpses, with utter disregard for the fate of the Gazan population for whom the group has no other agenda than that of martyrdom. On the Israeli side, even as society is moved by the parade of emaciated hostages organized by Hamas, Netanyahu and his allies are rejoicing in the parodies of “solutions” announced with unheard-of levity by President Donald Trump. For a misguided Zionism, any evasion of the Palestinian question is already a victory in itself. Therein lies the secret intelligence that unites the contrasting plans for the future of Gaza: whether the terrorists dig their tunnels again under the feet of destitute civilians, or whether Gaza becomes an ultraliberal paradise for tourists after a forced displacement of its population, it is the political character of the situation that will have been obliterated. Because, on both sides, the aim is to establish a simple balance of power between powers measuring themselves against their capacity for destruction. Faced with this brutal depoliticization of the issues, and their derealization, we wanted to present another depiction of the situation, which cannot be described as a victory for anyone. K. therefore acts as a conduit for

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The truce concluded between Israel and Hamas has given rise to a deplorable spectacle. On the Hamas side, they are shouting “victory” over a field of ruins and corpses, with no regard for the fate of the Gazan population for whom the group has no other plan than that of martyrdom. On the Israeli side, Netanyahu is delighted with the parodies of “solutions” announced with incredible levity by President Trump. Here, K. shares a Palestinian voice, that of Ihab Hassan, first published in Liberties, who thinks in the only politically viable terms: those of a conflict between two equally just national claims, pointing to the horizon of a two-state solution.

Levinas' thinking is above all rooted in an ethical concern, which seems to lift him to heights beyond the political fray. Yet at certain key points in his work, we find bold political considerations that can enlighten our action in the present. Here, Jean-François Rey introduces us to this side of the philosopher that is too often overlooked.

Why do some historians of antisemitism absolutely reject any analogy between October 7 and historical anti-Jewish persecution? Matthew Bolton situates this debate, with its far-reaching political implications, on an epistemological level, explaining why “historicists” refuse to conceive of antisemitism as “eternal hatred”. In return, he exposes the flawed nature of their method, which ends up dissolving the very concept of antisemitism by obliterating its historical necessity.

An artist, criminal and provocateur who lived and died on the fringes. Mitchell Abidor traces the journey of the Belgian-Jewish artist Stéphane Mandelbaum, who fused his Jewish identity, dyslexia, and obsession with both outcasts and perpetrators into creations that challenge and unsettle.

The documentary work of Ruth Beckermann (b. 1952) has played an important role in shaping Austria’s relationship with its past. In this interview with the Viennese filmmaker and writer, Liam Hoare and Beckermann discuss some of the documentaries in her rich filmography, and how they blend political activism and Judaism, in the context of a gradual rise of the far right and a taboo on the fate of Jews during the war.

As the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is commemorated, and the last survivors are summoned to compensate for the inadequacies of a memory that never seems to be able to take root, Ruben Honigmann reflects in this text on the possibility of recounting the Shoah. In his personal text, this attempt resembles a never-ending search, the meaning of which is never certain.

To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the discovery of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp by the Red Army, we are publishing a special feature bringing together texts published in K., dealing with the history and memorial challenges surrounding this place which symbolizes, more than any other, the horror of the Shoah. In particular, you’ll find a reflection on antisemitism “because of Auschwitz”, a clandestine manuscript written by Jewish prisoners of the camp who were already worried about the way in which the representation of the Shoah would be distorted, and several contributions confronting precisely these distortions and the difficulties in constituting a memory of the genocide.

Bruno Karsenti and Danny Trom examine the implications of this ceasefire agreement, which, while returning Israel to the sense of its historic mission, leaves the threat of Hamas unresolved and calls the form taken by the military operations carried out for over a year into question.

In the name of what promise, and what law, is the conquest of the promised land justified? Ivan Segré proposes a reading of the book of Judges, whose structure reveals the need to put to death the phallic, warmongering impulse that, yesterday as today, alienates Israel from its foundation.

The images of the crimes committed on October 7 provoked not only understandable shock, but also much debate: was it necessary to show the horror that Hamas terrorists sought to film and broadcast? Emmanuel Taïeb examines the fate of these images and the political uses to which they have been put, highlighting their reversibility and the risk of making them invisible.

From the subtle precision of The Metamorphosis to the unfinished enigma of The Castle, the Morgan Library & Museum exhibition on Franz Kafka, illuminates hiss creative process and evolving relationship with Jewishness, modernity, and the imagination. Mitchell Abidor weaves this exploration into the fabric of Philip Roth’s American literary landscape, revealing how Roth’s work refracts Kafka’s profound themes of family, identity, and exile through a distinctly Jewish-American lens.

In twentieth-century Europe, there are places whose names are inextricably linked with the atrocities committed there. Auschwitz, Majdanek, Buchenwald, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen… But not all of them sound German or Polish. The family trajectory of survival and exile that Marta Caraion traces in Geography of Darkness. Bucharest-Transnistria-Odessa, 1941-1981 [Editor’s translation from French original], reveals another toponymy of fear. Transformed by Marshal Antonescu’s Romania into a laboratory for ethnic cleansing, Transnistria is its darkest node. This intimate and brilliantly documented account unravels this knot, thread by thread, exposing the long-obscured memory of the Romanian Shoah.

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Thanks to the Paris office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation for their cooperation in the design of the magazine’s website.