Politics

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.

What is it that explains the ability of anti-Zionism to unify protests in the name of emancipation, and the fact that Israel has become the focal point of criticism from universities? In a measured and enlightening text, Bruno Karsenti takes a step-by-step look at the language of student protests, to gain a perspective on the political reconfigurations that lie ahead. In this language, two notions are opposed as irreconcilable: the nation, the only historically realized political form of collective and individual emancipation, and an apolitical fetish – the solution to all ills – autochthony. A drifting critique haunts the university, which instead of reflexively reclaiming the potential of the political form nation – which has undeniably led to crimes – opposes it with the fantasy of a pure, authentic people. Unbeknownst to the students, it is the old ‘Jewish question’ that finds a new formulation, around the unthinkable persistence of the Jewish people in the modern nation.

On what cultural soil is the radical condemnation of Israel based? Eva Illouz applies the principle of deconstruction of representations so beloved of part of the Left to the question of antisemitism. She sheds light on the old trope that feeds militant passion, and allows it to clear its conscience: the idea that Jews represent a danger to humanity.

The crises that have already marked the 21st century, from 9/11 to the coronavirus pandemic, have given rise to numerous debates on the legitimacy of social criticism when it turns conspiratorial. In this text, Balázs Berkovits contributes to this discussion by questioning the unthought of those who excuse conspiracy theory: is antisemitic criticism like any other criticism?

We’ve heard of anti-Zionism, but what is counter-Zionism? In this review of Shaul Magid’s latest book, The Necessity of Exile, Abraham Zuraw questions the relevance of a certain Jewish-American modality of criticism of Israel, which is articulated in the name of a metaphysics of exile and whose consistency is difficult to grasp.