#266 / Editorial
Defending Israel from a resolutely Zionist standpoint today means finding oneself caught in a suffocating vise. On the left, there is an anti-Zionism that opposes what it refuses, on principle, to understand, since it reduces the essence of Israel to a generic, colonial principle: that of the domineering West. On the right, a vociferous defense of Israel has become dominant, yet it pays no heed to the specific nature of this state, since it defends it only as if it were a “state like any other,” which leads it to support the policies of the Netanyahu government at a time when the latter is most openly betraying the spirit of Zionism. In this saturated situation, the essay “Reason of State” by the German philosopher Christoph Menke proposes a salutary shift in the lines of division, which helps us to imagine what another defense—and another critique—of Israel might look like. What he points out, based on his analysis of the anti-Jewish character of the “right-wing defense” of Israel, is that the latter shares with anti-Zionism a certain conception of the state—one they consider insurmountable—from which they differ only in the nature of the judgment passed upon it. In other words, they are united in a profound misunderstanding of Jewish difference, insofar as it was embodied in the political form of the Exodus and came to subvert the categories of state domination. What is thus denied, on both sides, is the possibility that the Jewish state might not, in fact, be a state like all the others. Menke, then, allows us to reopen a topic dear to K.: the meaning of Zionism as the continuation of Jewish exile politics, and not its end.
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Adopting a Zionist position understood in this way must lead us to offer an uncompromising critique of Israel when it strays from its ideal and descends into the crudest form of state domination. Today, the expansion of settlement in the West Bank must be the object of our strongest rejection, for it represents precisely the point where the deviation is most radical. This week we are publishing an interview with Dvir Warshavski, a religious activist on the Israeli left and co-founder of the organization Bnei Avraham, which accompanies Palestinian farmers on their land and defends them against attacks by settlers. He describes the deteriorating situation of Palestinians in the West Bank, the growing blurring of lines between settlers and soldiers, and the gradual erosion of institutional safeguards. But he also testifies to how, on the ground, political actors are mobilizing their understanding of the authentic meaning of Zionism in its Jewish character and their struggle for coexistence with the Palestinian people.
From April 16 to August 30, the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris is dedicating an exhibition—the first of its kind in France—to the transdisciplinary artist Noa Eshkol. To mark the occasion, we are publishing excerpts from the exhibition catalog, which explore the work of this artist—who is simultaneously a dancer, movement theorist, and visual artist—and her history, intertwined with that of Israel, from the Degania Bet kibbutz to the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War.
