Politics

Each week this summer, K. brings you a selection of texts that have already appeared in our pages, but have been brought together for the occasion around a few key themes. This week, we invite you to (re)discover K.’s work on the words of conflict. With texts by Bruno Karsenti, Julia Christ, Danny Trom, Diana Muir and David Lemler.

What does it mean for a nation to exist? Taking as his starting point the position of Milan Kundera – who died exactly a year ago – and the movement of cultural resistance to the dissolution of Soviet totalitarianism, Danny Trom questions the difference between nationalist dreams of power and the irreducible claim to a national (and European) spirit. Is there not something at stake here for the future of Israel?

In France, the radical left is plagued by antisemitism that expresses itself in multiple, underground ways. Since October 7 in particular, anti-Jewish outbursts, conveyed in particular by France Insoumise executives and activists, have been documented and constantly denounced by Jewish organizations. Yet, while this left wing acknowledges its anti-Zionism, it denies any accusation of antisemitism, claiming to belong to the anti-racist camp. Recently, intellectuals close to France Insoumise published an opinion piece that caused quite a stir, with the explicit aim of clearing their movement of any antisemitism. Elisheva Gottfarstein’s text is a step-by-step response to their diabolically specious arguments.

With parliamentary elections approaching in France, and the issue of antisemitism taking center stage in the political debate, the editorial staff of K. felt it was their duty to take a stand. However, given the existential and strategic dilemma facing Jews, we felt it was impossible for this position to be expressed in a single voice: it had to be divided. Two Jewish voices, those of Bruno Karsenti and Danny Trom, are thus articulated and answered here. Let there be no mistake: the aim is not to make each hold one pole of the electoral dilemma, but rather to grasp it at two different levels. First, that of the philosopher, who poses it from the point of view of what the reference to the Jewish condition represents, or should represent, for the Jews themselves, and above all for the Left and its future. Then that of the sociologist, who takes charge of the practical dimension of the dilemma, illuminating through the strategies of perseverance in exile the embarrassment and wanderings of Jews who no longer know where to look for security.

Some people claim that the French far-right party Rassemblement National (RN) is no longer antisemitic, and that the vast majority of Jews would vote for Bardella. To discuss these two dubious assertions, we spoke to film director and essayist Jonathan Hayoun– notably the author, with Judith Cohen-Solal, of La main du diable : Comment l’extrême droite a voulu séduire les Juifs de France (Grasset,2019) [TN:The Devil’s Hand: How the far right tried to seduce the Jews of France] –, and Johan Weisz, journalist and editor-in-chief and committed founder of the online media StreetPress. Interviewed by Elie Petit, they question the idea that, beyond the communication strategy, there would be a real normalization of the RN, while questioning the feeling of danger in which the Jews of France live, and its political consequences.

We know without a shadow of a doubt that the far right is structurally antisemitic. We even know it so well that we sometimes forget that antisemitism is not structurally extreme right-wing. In this text, Julia Christ examines the deleterious effects of this discrepancy between what is known, and what does not want to be known. Without changing its ideological matrix, the far right has turned suspicion into strength – the ability to assume what it does and control what it says – aided and abetted by opponents who, rather than assuming their political responsibility, take refuge in childish posturing: “we didn’t know…”.

The result of Zionism, in other words, access to political sovereignty, also meant that the Jewish state had to exercise violence. In this text, Danny Trom returns to the difficulties of coming to terms with the violence inflicted, and its articulation with the violence suffered by Jews. It seems as though, after the Zionist revolution, Jews could only oscillate in their relationship to violence.

Since the student mobilizations in support of Gaza began, universities have become the focus of media and political curiosity. But what does the situation look like from the inside? A student familiar with the activist world gives us their view of what happened in the universities, the forces at play and the ambiguities that run through the pro-Palestinian mobilization.

In Canada, a fresh iteration of anti-Judaism takes shape. Ben Wexler, a recent graduate from McGill University in Montreal, watched with alarm as a wave of attacks swept through his hometown’s Jewish community. A series of firebombings, shootings, and vandalism targeted Jewish schools, synagogues, community centres, and businesses, beginning after October 7 and continuing into the present.  At the same time, protests against Israel often cross into explicit antisemitism and incitement. Wexler notes a curious variation on anti-Zionist formulas: Canada’s Jews – the Diaspora’s third-largest community, at 300,000 strong – are regarded as a distinctly ‘settler’ population, alongside the Yishuv and the modern state of Israel.