Politics

Nearly 2,800 public figures, most of them Israeli and American (including a very large number of academics), have signed an open letter, The Elephant in the Room, calling on them to speak out against the “ultimate goal” of the judicial reform proposed by the current Israeli government: the maintenance of the “apartheid regime”. This last qualification is debatable – and even contested by some of the petition’s signatories. So why did they sign it? This is Dan Diner’s answer.

90 years after Hitler’s ascension to power, philosopher Julia Christ takes stock of German memory. Alongside the undeniable work of reparation and repentance that has been carried out in Germany, she points out the blind spots, loopholes and memory impasses that distort the way in which the Nazi past is viewed, and the gradual erosion of the sense of guilt that ensues. Interview conducted by Rafaël Amselem in partnership with Akadem.

What exactly do Giorgia Meloni’s right-wingers mean by Homeland and Nation? What kind of Italy is it dreaming of when it hammers home these two concepts today? Simone Disegni explores this question by looking back at two stories of Italian Jewish children: that of Edgardo Mortara, taken from his family by the Vatican in 1858, and that of Franco Cesana, a partisan who died in combat in 1944 at the age of 13.

Each week this summer, K. brings you a selection of four articles that have already appeared in our pages, but which have been brought together for the occasion around a few key themes. This week: a feature on the political situation in Israel, with articles by Bruno Karsenti, Danny Trom, Guy G. Stroumsa and Sari Nusseibeh.

Each week this summer, K. brings you a selection of four articles that have already appeared in our pages, but which have been brought together for the occasion around a few key themes. This week: a dossier on the Left, Jews and antisemitism today, with articles by Milo Lévy-Bruhl, Jonas Pardo, Sylvaine Bulle and Hugo Latzer.

Daniel Boyarin, Professor of History of Religions and a renowned specialist in Talmudic Culture and Ancient Judaism, has published this year The No-State Solution. A Jewish Manifesto [Yale University Press], which claims on its back cover to be a “provocative book”. “provocative book”. Danny Trom discusses the anti-Zionism and “diasporic nationalism” that Boyarin promotes.

Russia’s unbearable aggression against Ukraine is combined with the fact that the country under attack has a problematic relationship with its past, to say the least. The history of its national construction and its memory of the Shoah sometimes violate Jewish memory. Boris Czerny examines the place accorded to the Shoah in Ukraine, and asks what it means in the debate surrounding the country’s eventual integration into the European Union.

In France, a resolution tabled by Communist deputy Jean-Paul Lecoq to condemn “the institutionalization by the State of Israel of a regime of apartheid” was defended on Thursday May 4 in the French National Assembly, before being rejected. Bruno Karsenti reviews the text of this resolution and shows what the demon of apartheid brandished by the now hegemonic part of the French left is really for. He also shows how, while seeking to take advantage of the movement of opposition to the government that is currently taking place in Israel, the drafters of the resolution fail to understand its meaning and scope.

In the interview that documentary filmmaker Juliette Senik conducted for K. in the summer of 2022, Jose Rebeiro e Castro, the main initiator of the Law granting Portuguese nationality through naturalization to the descendants of Portuguese Sephardic Jews (often referred to as “the Law of Return”), the latter outlined his motives for doing so at that time. He also deplored the controversy caused by the alleged misuse of the Law of Return and the difficulties associated with the processing of an incredible number of applications. It appears that his fears were well founded since the law was frozen a few months later, at the end of a process described here by journalist Elie Petit.