Politics

The speech by German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck, a member of the Green Party, on the situation in the Middle East on 2 November struck a chord. With an infallible clarity that in Europe could probably only come from Germany, he insisted both on the right of the Palestinians to have their own state and on Israel’s right to defend its security. He criticised the ambivalence of some sections of public opinion towards Hamas and explained why Germany and Europe, if they want to remain true to the basis of their political legitimacy, must not give in in the fight against anti-Semitism under any circumstances and for no “humanitarian” reason. K. introduces the translation of his speech into French with a short text by Julia Christ and Danny Trom explaining its significance in the confusion of current political discourse.

As conditions for the population of Gaza worsen and the fate of the hostages in the hands of Hamas remains in abeyance, the legitimate call for a ceasefire is becoming increasingly emphatic. In this context, where a sense of both humanitarian and political urgency prevails, the question arises of the degree to which Israel should respond to the unprecedented crime that has struck it. Bruno Karsenti explores this issue by asking the equally crucial question of what Israel must be able to do in order to remain true to what it is.

Our collaborator Mitchell Abidor writes here about his anger with a part of his political camp, writing about it, saying: “Blinded by hatred of Israel, fearing being associated with the governments of the West, the left’s moral compass has gone missing.” His account of the analyses and reports published in the left-wing press since October 7, particularly the left-wing Jewish press , provides insights into the mechanism behind the nearly physical impossibility felt by the American left to condemn outright the massacres carried out by Hamas.

“Israel faces the vertigo of vengeance” was the headline of an article published in Le Monde a week after 7 October. But to imagine that Israel will act in this way is to delude oneself. Danny Trom explains why Israel will not and cannot avenge itself by deciphering what this omnipresent warning imperceptibly conveys.

Sergey Lagodinsky is a German politician (The Greens) of Russian Jewish origin, member of the European Parliament since 2019. “We have all been attacked” was published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung a few days after the Hamas attacks. In it, he expresses his concern when, in the face of “terrorists [who] destroy human bodies”, he sees, at the heart of democratic Europe, “indifferent neighbours, discreet silencers, cold relativists and all those, many of them, who are too comfortable where they are to seriously confront the new reality”.

In the wake of Hamas’s bloody attack on Israel and the Hebrew state’s armed response against the Gaza Strip, American philosopher Michael Walzer, author of “Just and Unjust Wars” (1977), offers his analysis of the political and legal motives behind this unprecedented conflict.

European and American universities, once considered politically neutral, have gradually become involved in political statements in solidarity with victims of injustice. However, when it comes to events related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, these same universities, without consulting each other, have generally remained silent, tacitly and collectively. They have thus revealed their fundamental reluctance to take a stand on any issue concerning the Jews, especially when the issue is their mass murder as Jews and in the most important Jewish centre in the world, Israel. Why is this so? What does it mean, in particular, that the majority of the social sciences have become incapable of studying the Jewish condition from an objective point of view, whether in the Diaspora or in Israel, and seem to have an irresistible tendency, without admitting it, to place “the Jews” in the camp of the “dominant”?

After the events in Israel on October 7, 2023, the coordinates of the Jewish world are no longer the same. They are shifting, recomposing, and rearranging themselves, so that among all the feelings that beset Jews today stands the disorientation provoked by this upheaval. It’s not easy, while gripped by dread and plunged into mourning, to make sense of it. The only way to unravel the new situation is to force ourselves to open our eyes – even if we’d like to keep them closed and look only inside ourselves. 

In issue 129 of K., we discussed the open letter, entitled “The Elephant in the room”, denouncing the State of Israel as an apartheid regime. The petition was signed by more than 2,500 academics, bringing together, in a combination unthinkable only a few months earlier, committed Zionists and avowed anti-Zionists. We gave the floor to several of our authors, who explained why they had signed even though they did not agree with the use of the word apartheid. The following text is intended to explain why such a characterization is historically and politically inappropriate, counter-productive and the fruit of an absolutely impracticable analogy, unless one wishes to discredit the history and very existence of Zionism in bad faith.