Article by Denis Charbit

Exactly thirty years ago, on November 4, 1995, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a religious Jewish extremist opposed to the peace process. In Yitzhak Rabin, la paix assassinée ? [ET: Yitzhak Rabin, the assassinated peace], Denis Charbit revisits the shockwaves caused by the event, the ambiguous legacy and fractured memory of the Israeli prime minister in his own country. For his name still divides, despite the commemorations that have become “a time for lies, a role-playing game, where, out of respect for form, Rabin’s opponents, who have been in power for nearly thirty years, have ‘a moral duty to commemorate him and a political duty to forget him’” writes Charbit, from whose book, to be published in French this week, we are publishing two excerpts.

What ideological resources do supporters of the binational solution draw on, at a time when cohabitation between Israelis and Palestinians seems more compromised than ever? Denis Charbit offers us his critical review of Shlomo Sand’s latest book, Two people for one State? Rereading the history of Zionism (Seuil). Born from within Zionist thought, Charbit nevertheless warns us against the deception of turning this perspective against the Zionist project as such.

Paris’ Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute) is now hosting a new exhibition dedicated to “the Jews of the Orient.” Showcasing the art and material culture of Jews in the Middle East and North Africa, the exhibit has won plaudits in the French press for a deep and sensitive depiction of these vanished Jewish communities. The museum has nonetheless raised the hackles of some Arab intellectuals, who accuse it of “normalization” vis-a-vis the state of Israel, due to the presence of several artifacts on loan from Jerusalem’s Israel Museum. Denis Charbit, political scientist at the Open University of Israel, discusses the polemic, as well as the long silence on the Jews of the Arab world