In Belgium, until proven otherwise, it is illegal to stab the throats of fellow citizens. However, it seems to be legal to publicly declare that you “want to stick a sharp knife in the throat of every Jew.” Welcome to the astonishing Brusselmans affair, named after the Flemish writer who called for the murder of Jews in a widely circulated weekly newspaper, without causing any scandal, and before being acquitted by the courts. Rafaël Amselem’s investigation—the first part of which we are publishing this week—explores the legal intricacies and Flemish cultural context in which such statements can pass as mere personal opinion and be covered by freedom of expression. While this case reveals a specifically Belgian unease with antisemitism and its anti-Zionist expressions, it also illustrates the aporias of an unlimited conception of freedom of expression, incapable of acknowledging the violence inherent in verbal attacks against minorities.
At a time when the war between Israel and Iran seems to have revived an old stereotype in part of Western public opinion—that of the Jew who must be relied upon to carry the banner of the struggle for universal justice and who, once again, has disappointed the proponents of this fantasy—a question that is both naive and provocative seems worth raising: “Why should Jews be useful?” Keith Kahn-Harris, the British author of Everyday Jews: Why the Jewish People Are Not Who You Think They Are [Icon Book, 2025] takes up the question this week and challenges our assumptions on the subject. The question, in fact, is addressed as much to Jews as to non-Jews, since it deals with the relationship that has become established between Jews and the world in our modern era. The irony, then, poorly conceals the seriousness of what is being raised: why do Jews seem condemned to occupy the center of public debate, and what prevents them from leading perfectly mundane and futile lives?
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Have you heard of Herman Brusselmans? He is the author of the following lines, which appeared in August 2024 in a popular Belgian magazine: "I see an image of a little Palestinian boy crying and screaming, calling for his mother who is buried under the rubble. I become so furious that I want to stab every Jew I meet in the throat with a sharp knife." Less than a year later, the case brought forward by a Jewish organization ended in acquittal. In a two-part investigation, Rafaël Amselem explains why—and how. A journey to Belgium, where these words are (almost) no longer shocking.
Keith Kahn-Harris, author of Everyday Jews: Why the Jewish people are not who you think they are, questions, with a hint of provocation, this strange and alienating Jewish tendency to want to make themselves indispensable to the world. What if the best response to antisemitism was ultimately to claim the right to frivolity, to allow oneself a perfectly superfluous existence?
Danny Trom's article “Holy Week on Xanax” sparked numerous reactions. Among the letters, some more constructive than others, one stood out: the response from anthropologist and historian Leopoldo Iribarren, which the editorial staff of K. unanimously decided to publish. Danny Trom, having come to his senses but far from repenting, responds to his colleague's friendly challenge.
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From the Iran-Iraq War to the bloody suppression of uprisings, to the current war, which has buried the Mullahs’ nuclear hopes, the memory of violence runs through an entire generation of Iranians. Iranian poet Atefe Asadi, now a refugee in Germany, shared her story with us. She questions the ethics of states faced with a criminal regime that has gone unpunished for decades. Between traumatic memories, lucid anger, and unyielding hope, she paints a portrait of an abandoned people. She looks back on the bloody repression, the lost illusions, and the ongoing war—and yet continues to dream of a free Iran.
While certain historical truths are too often silenced, stating them does not necessarily mean taking on the role of demystifier. The great merit of this interview with Benny Morris, first published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on June 20, 2025 [on the eve of the US attack], is that it illustrates how accurate and lucid historical work can lead to salutary political clarifications. As the war with Iran raged, the Israeli historian, a leading figure among the “new historians” of the 1980s and author of The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 – a pioneering work on the causes of the Palestinian exodus – revisited the roots of the Middle East conflict and the myths surrounding it.
The conflict between Israel and the mullahs’ Iran — which, at the time of writing, appears to be coming to an end — has highlighted the significance of war itself for Israel. By depriving the Islamic Republic of Iran of the means to achieve its exterminatory goals, Israel is redefining the concrete conditions for its security. This raises with even greater urgency the question of whether to continue the endless and deadly war in Gaza. But the confrontation that has just ended also calls into question Europe’s inaction in the face of the criminal threats made for decades against the State of Israel and the Jews, which is merely the other side of its indifference to the fate of the Iranian people.
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.
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.
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