Politics

The longer Israel’s military response in Gaza drags on, the more the memory of October 7 seems to fade in international public opinion. In this text, Danny Trom draws the consequences of such a development—the emergence of a clear divide between those for whom the event has passed and those who, increasingly isolated, keep it firmly in mind.

Why have historians been unable to qualify the October 7 massacres as part of the history of anti-Semitism? Jacques Ehrenfreund analyzes this crisis in the profession as a symptom, highlighting its connection with a form of radical criticism of the Jews on the rise in the West. This criticism, which blames the Jews for having failed to learn the right lessons from history, and in particular from their persecution, has less to do with modern anti-Semitism than with Christian anti-Judaism…

On December 10, Javier Milei, “el loco” [the madman], officially became Argentina’s new president. One of the astounding aspects of the populist tribune’s rise to power is his relationship with Judaism. He made the chief rabbi of the Moroccan-Argentine Jewish community Acilba his “spiritual guide”, and declared that he would devote his life to the Torah once he had accomplished the political mission God had assigned him. Francesco Callegaro looks back at the strange theological-political knot in which Orthodox Judaism and the pinnacle of the Argentine state now find themselves intertwined.

This text was written in a different context from that which emerged after October 7. It did, however, anticipate a double question precipitated by this event: that of the specificity of antisemitism within the logic of racism, and that of what, in contemporary societies, makes the potential victims of racism sometimes bearers, paradoxically, of antisemitic arguments.

How do Israeli Arabs experience October 7 and its aftermath? In her testimony, Mouna Maroun, a doctor of neurobiology and vice president of the University of Haifa, provides some answers to this question. Based on her personal experience of harmonious coexistence between Israeli Jews and Arabs and her struggle to deepen it at the university, she examines the difficulties posed to the integration process by the shock experienced by Israeli society as a whole, but also the reasons for hope.

By filming their crimes themselves, the Hamas terrorists made a spectacle of the massacre they committed on October 7. A 40-minute film documenting the atrocities was produced by the Israeli authorities and has been shown several times (since October 23 in Israel, since November 14 in France) to selected audiences. What exactly is in this film and how should we deal with these images? In a debate organized in partnership with Akadem, Michael Prazan—documentary filmmaker and writer—and Jean-Baptiste Thoret—film historian—examine the history, uses and effects of documentary images of extreme violence on those who view them. 

Philip Spencer, author of numerous texts on modern anti-Semitism and the Shoah – and more particularly on the problems raised by their treatment on the left – is now a member of the new London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, founded by David Hirsh. In his interview with K., in which he discusses his own political career, he looks back at the reactions to 7 October in England, going through the history of the undigested legacy of the British mandate over Palestine and the history of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn.

Two months after 7 October, Bruno Karsenti describes the turning point that such an event represents for Israel and the Diaspora. An existential coordinate of the Jewish world has been shaken, and although the reaction of the Israeli people and their State was immediate and strong, what happened nonetheless calls for a fresh look at the constraints and duties weighing on the Jewish world in its entirety. This also means, and no doubt above all, looking at the Palestinian question differently from the way we have done up to now.

What can we say about the sexual crimes committed by Hamas men on October 7 – documented a little more each day by the work of an Israeli group of gynecologists, forensic doctors, psychologists and international lawyers? And how are we to understand the concealment of the violence against women on that day by part of world opinion – including supposed “feminists”? Doesn’t this concealment amount to inflicting violence on these women a second time, as if their ordeal didn’t count and was meaningless?

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Thanks to the Paris office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation for their cooperation in the design of the magazine’s website.