Politics

How can we understand the composition of the new government formed by Benjamin Netanyahu, which gives pride of place to religious Zionism and to a nationalism itself increasingly tinged with religious references? How can we understand it historically and circumstantially? Danny Trom looks back at this event, which marks a break in the history of Israel and of Zionism itself.

Martine Cohen is a sociologist specialising in the evolution of French Judaism. The text she has let us republish in K. is an extract from her recent book: “Fin du Franco-judaïsme ? Quelle place pour les Juifs dans une France multiculturelle ?” More precisely, it appears in the chapter “Dissonances politiques”, in which the author identifies the sources of unease that weaken “Franco-Judaism”. This Franco-Judaism crystallised in its new form during the 1980s, in a break with the ‘Israelism’ of the 19th century.

Antisemitism has been escalating dramatically in the United States in recent years. The main tenet of American Jews – that antisemitic violence only occurs “over there” in Europe and the Middle East – has been put to the test. Daniel Solomon revisits the phenomenon, focusing on how Kanye West synthesizes antisemitic tropes from the right and others from the left in an unprecedented way.

After the recent Israeli elections, the most right-wing government in the country’s history is expected to emerge. If the result is the effect of a long dynamic, it is nonetheless staggering. The philosopher Bruno Karsenti comes back in this text on what may well be a turning point in the history of Israel, and on the deviation of Zionism that it signals. A deviation that, in order to be avoided, implies re-understanding Zionism from the Diaspora, and particularly from Europe.

Ecology, as well as anti-capitalist and communalist alternatives, are increasingly popular with activists and researchers committed to social criticism. These audiences sometimes refer to Gustave Landauer (1870-1919), Emma Goldman (1869-1940), Murray Bookchin (1921-2006), or even Martin Buber (1878-1965), Jewish thinkers who can be described as anarchists or libertarian socialists. Their utopian visions prefigured an agrarian socialism or an everyday communism, of which certain initiatives in France – such as the zones to be defended or the alternative and ecological collectives – are reactivations. Sylvaine Bulle returns to the Jewish origins of these reference authors; origins that remain silent by those who analyse and defend their thought.

Jonas Pardo has been an activist for several years within the radical left, where he has long hidden his Judaism. Following the attack on the Hyper Cacher, he decided, with a handful of other activists, not to let the anti-Semitism that sometimes manifests itself and the denial that often surrounds it continue. This was the first step in a process that would lead him to create a training course on the fight against antisemitism specifically designed to address the left. In this article for K. he tells his story, details his training workshop and the various reactions it provokes.

The identity of Jews from Arab countries is the object of a conflict of legitimacy between the State of Israel and the supporters of the Palestinian cause. This article proposes a contextualization and reflection on the concept of “Arab Jew” and its political uses, following the controversy that erupted at the end of 2021 around the Institut du Monde Arabe’s exhibition “Jews of the Orient, a multi-millennial history”. 

Lavrov’s statement that Zelensky could be both a Jew and a Nazi and that Hitler had “Jewish blood” struck a chord. Reactions in Europe were unanimous in their indignation at what was perceived as the obscene words of a political leader ready to do anything to justify his country’s brutal war. But what exactly is behind this sense of obscenity? Is it really the expression of a rejection of the real Nazism, the one that had the hatred of the Jews as its springboard? Or does this feeling cover a more fundamental ambivalence in the relationship that Europeans have with Jews, even today? Stéphane Bonnet shows us that this is indeed the case. Europeans, rightly shocked by Lavrov’s words, are not so inclined to analyse themselves as much as they should be to fight the roots of their antisemitism. After the Shoah, it is impossible for them to ignore the fact that it lies deep within themselves. And opposing it is a task that requires more than condemning it when it is stated openly: it requires going so far as to want Judaism in Europe and for Europe.

“Avenge us”. To the supplication that arose from the murdered Jews and appeared everywhere after the war – on the walls of ruined synagogues or on small pieces of paper left by those who made it their last wish before perishing – Abba Kovner, poet and fighter, wanted to respond. He sought to extend the partisan struggle against the Nazi state with a large-scale revenge action. He made plans that either failed or were not carried out. The legacy of Abba Kovner is that of a dead end, according to Danny Trom: the dead end of a revenge thought to be necessary and unattainable.