Politics

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not only fractured the Middle East: it has reopened a rift at the heart of Europe. Why has this distant war become the “question” that is tearing the continent apart? What does it reveal about our idea of justice, our memory, and our confidence in emancipation? By tracing the genealogy of the major European “questions” – social, national, feminist – Julia Christ invites us to radically shift our perspective: what if today’s uncertainty is not just about political positions, but about the very meaning of Europe itself?

Thirty years after Rabin’s assassination, what remains of the peace camp? Israeli sociologist Ilan Greilsammer recalls the objectives pursued by Rabin’s policies and makes the bitter observation that the right wing has become the majority. Will the latter’s negligence, revealed by October 7 and the conduct of the war in Gaza, allow the cards to be reshuffled?

Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor of New York City, making him the first openly anti-Zionist mayor of the metropolis, goes far beyond the boundaries of municipal politics. This success, driven by progressive youth and a significant portion of American Jews, reveals the depth of generational and ideological divisions within American Judaism. Between growing disaffection with Israel, rising antisemitism, and the reshaping of the Democratic Party, Mamdani’s victory acts as a brutal revelation of an American Jewish world in the midst of an identity crisis.

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.

Under Netanyahu’s government, and with the war in Gaza, the State of Israel has found itself increasingly isolated on the international stage. The Israeli Prime Minister, a fan of power politics and macho bravado, would like to make this a source of pride: “We are going to be super-Sparta.” But, asks Danny Trom, isn’t Spartan sovereignty a pseudo-sovereignty, especially for the Jewish people? Examining the political lessons drawn by Hannah Arendt from Jewish history, the sociologist identifies the requirements that the Jewish state must meet if it wants to ensure more lasting autonomy.

Introduction: The massacre of October 7, 2023, caused an earthquake whose shockwaves continue to reverberate throughout the Jewish world. In Israel, it reactivated the specter of pogroms, which the state was supposed to have made impossible; in the diaspora, it revealed the fragility of a security that was thought to be guaranteed. In this lecture given in Bern on October 9, historian Jacques Ehrenfreund examines what this event says about our times: the end of the post-Shoah era, the dissolution of European moral standards, and the persistence of a hostility that history seemed to have disqualified.

October 7 did not only reopen the wound of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it also revived a fault line buried in the Western consciousness, particularly in Europe. The event laid bare the link between the history of the Middle East and that of the continent that scrutinizes its explosions. For October 7 was not only imported into the debates: it was reflected upon, revealing the internal crisis of a Europe uncertain of its post-Shoah and post-colonial legacy, and now divided between three irreconcilable narratives—the Western-oriented, the anti-colonial, and specifically the European. At the heart of this divide are two haunting questions: What remains of Europe if it can no longer recognize what the resurgence of antisemitism means, here and there? But also, what remains of Zionism as a European project if its response to antisemitism in terms of the rights of peoples eludes it just as much?

Between staunch supporters and fierce detractors, recognition of the State of Palestine crystallizes sharply divided positions. Each side’s arguments are defensible—as long as they aim to protect both Israel’s security and the Palestinians’ right to self-determination—but the challenge here is to understand what such a gesture would actually achieve: would a declaration of principle have consequences for the future?

After the Brusselmans affair, the Flemish magazine HUMO has struck again… This time, it is the medieval antisemitic trope of the “Jewish butcher” that has been revived by a cartoon by the duo Kama & Seele. Joël Kotek, historian and president of the Jonathas Institute, looks back at the history and current state of antisemitic imagery in the Belgian and international press.