#268 / Editorial
In the face of injustice – the kind that nails a people to the cross – the world sleeps. Everyone? No, Francesca Albanese has her eyes wide open, and she’s determined to make that known. The controversial UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories recently released her book When the World Sleeps: Stories, Voices, and Wounds of Palestine, published in French last October and now available in the English-speaking world (When the World Sleeps, Other Press). Liam Hoare read it on this occasion. His review notes the impression of a profound dissonance between the importance of Albanese’s official role, as the voice of the UN’s position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the public persona she actually embodies. Beyond even her principled anti-Zionism, Albanese positions herself as both a star and a martyr for the cause she is tasked with representing on the international stage. Liam Hoare analyzes how the character’s self-aggrandizement and the poverty of her style reduce the conflict to a moral fable in which Albanese plays the leading role, and the Palestinians serve as mere foils.
European Judaism finds its coherence in a shared history, culture, and memory. But is this relative unity expressed in the relationships between the various communities that comprise it? In March 2026, the European Council of Jewish Communities (ECJC) held its annual summit in Athens, bringing together some 250 Jewish leaders from 30 countries. Élie Petit attended on behalf of K. to explore how this institution intended to serve as a platform for connection for European Jewish communities. In the conference hallways, between sessions on leadership, community governance, and demographic trends in European Jewry, he spoke with Michel Montreuil, a consultant for the JDC (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee), and Taly Mair, director of the ECJC. It was an opportunity to ask them for their analysis of the situation of Jewish communities across Europe today.
On the occasion of May 8th, our editor-in-chief Stéphane Bou recalls how the victory of the Allied powers over Nazi Germany might have been experienced by Jewish survivors of the Shoah. Drawing on the memories of the Polish Jewish playwright Ionas Turkov regarding his own experience of May 8, 1945, he explored this particularly acute intersection between the Jewish fate and the fate of humanity. While the crowds rejoiced, the Jews were in mourning. While humanity was horrified by the sixty million war dead, Jews were facing the near-total annihilation of their people in Europe. How could this particular suffering be made heard amid the universal carnage? What words could prevent humanity – simultaneously in mourning and in jubilation – from forgetting?
