Edito

Once again, fire is raining down on Gaza. Neither the demands for the return of the hostages addressed to their captors and torturers have been heard. Nor those for negotiations to take precedence addressed to an Israeli government, that is reinforced in its policy of force and which revels in the perpetuation of war. (We are republishing the report of Day 210 after October 7. K. dove into the protests for the liberation of the hostages.) Once again, the declared desire to eliminate the Hamas leadership is being paid for with an unjustified number of Palestinian civilian deaths, and the victims are piling up in the midst of a polarization that no responsible political discourse, in either camp, is able to stop. Such a discourse would presuppose that the current dominant trend, which sometimes seems on the verge of sweeping everything away, is finally being countered: the trend that inclines towards unbridled nihilism, the nature of which has yet to be diagnosed.

In terms of such a diagnosis, it is equally striking to see that what brings us closest today, in our regions, is the reflection that arises from the apparently irrepressible surge of antisemitism. What do antisemitic people believe in? Answer: Nothing. But in this case, it is a Nothing that becomes all-powerful and all-consuming. It proliferates in the period we are living through. The important thing here is the gesture that denies, because when speech is decreed powerless, all that remains is to oppose it with the perspective of an act that would have the immense capacity to exhaust all meaning. From this arise those apocalyptic dreams, half-exalted and half-anguished, in which the possibility of finally finding a world to match oneself emerges for the subject who is sustained only by this negation. But it is also the breeding ground in which strange acts flourish – a misery of current political affairs – which, in order to present themselves on the public stage, nevertheless radically refuse to be interpreted. For those curious about the origins of this resounding nihilism, which is specific to an era that exalts the immediate over representation, and its deep affinities with antisemitism, the philosophical reflection proposed this week by Gérard Bensussan will be a valuable contribution.

Successive reforms to secondary and tertiary education have increased the opacity of the selection process and competition between students. Today stressed pupils and their worried parents are faced with a real obstacle course. Combine this fact with the unease felt by Jewish students in France since October 7 and you get a place where promises of academic excellence rub shoulders with those of a guaranteed refuge: the “Choosing a Jewish School” fair. Two years ago, Maëlle Partouche went there for K., to examine the upsurge in enrolments in the Jewish private sector, and its link with the increase in the number of people leaving for Israel. On the occasion of the sixth edition held on January 19, she returned to assess the effects of October 7 on the educational strategies of Jewish families and their relationship to the possibility of Aliyah. A view from the ground.

K., as our readers know, is an exceptionally serious publication. However, this week’s issue coincides with two carnival-like celebrations, since they call for rejoicing in the subversion of the usual established order of power and domination, until their overthrow. So what can we do to avoid losing our reputation as killjoys? We have found no other solution than to explore the meaning of these festivals, which, if we want to avoid them being reduced to mere masquerades, they must retain a tangible sense of festivity.

Purim is a festival linked to the political condition of Jews in exile, in the sense that it reflects the central issue at stake: that of their protection as a dispersed people. In principle, the Jewish state – which is dedicated to this task of protection – should make the experience of the tension contained in the Book of Esther inaccessible, and therefore Purim obsolete. Yet Purim continued to be celebrated, even where its meaning was most remote. On October 7, by highlighting the function of the Jewish state and its limitations, this progressive derealization was called into question. So much so that, for this year’s Purim, there are calls for Israeli children to adopt the Batman costume worn by Ariel Bibas. But what exactly does this call to update the diasporic festival par excellence in Israel mean? Danny Trom invites us to consider the meaning of Purim, in its disjointedness depending on whether one is in the diaspora or in Israel, but also in its convergence.

What is International Women’s Day if not a procession of calculated tributes, a choreography of sycophantic bows, a high mass of warm feelings where the patriarchy goes to the trouble, once a year, of pretending to bury itself? That, at least, is the opinion of our author Valeria Solanstein who, pastiching Valerie Solanas’ famous SCUM Manifesto of 1967, tells us about the reality of the female condition in the Jewish community on all the days when we don’t pretend that male domination is dying. K. believes that we must hear this cry of rage from a young Jewish woman who is trying to exist in a world that does not want her if she cannot stay put “in her place”. When it comes to women’s emancipation, the Jewish world is no worse than the rest of society, but it is no better either, is what this voice painfully echoes.

It was equally painful to see Jewish women and feminists being rejected again from demonstrations in honor of International Women’s Rights Day. Like last year, this procession, which was supposed to advance the struggle for women’s emancipation, turned into an anti-Israeli forum, stubbornly refusing to hear the suffering that Jewish women endured on October 7, and later in the Hamas tunnels. All this in the name of a twisted universalism, claiming to work for the emancipation of all. To honor Israeli women, who clearly do not belong to this “all” in the eyes of Western feminists, this week we are republishing the chilling text that Julia Christ devoted to the mass rapes on October 7, and to this false universalism where Jewish women seem not to matter.

Almost a year ago, Jean-Claude Milner published a text in K. taking note of the reconfiguration of relations between the United States and Israel – moving towards the latter being placed under trusteeship – and announced, while regretting it, the probable dissolution of Western Judaism in the American WASP sphere. In his diagnosis, Europe was hardly more than a negligible part, which “cares only about itself”: only the United States mattered. Today, as the Trump presidency seems to be setting in motion an imperial revolution of the international order, by challenging the principle of equality between nation states that was that of post-World War II reconstruction – of which the humiliation imposed on Zelenski at the White House was the grotesque illustration – Milner returns to update his diagnosis, in the sense of its confirmation. The perspective that emerges is commensurate with the situation, which is catastrophic, and there is no question of opposing any kind of irenicism to this. But the reader who does not tell himself stories, and is therefore devastated, will be led to become aware of this fact: in the face of the untenable nature of the situation, the European proposal once again becomes decisive. There can be no question of taking comfort in the hope that Europe, which had effectively fallen into political insignificance, will pull itself together in the face of the threat of its enslavement. But at the same time, it must be recognized that Europe is in fact important for the international order that is currently being redrawn, and therefore not only “for itself”. And, in the act by which it asserts itself, it is also important for Jews, as the place where the unity of the dispersed people can find its realization, in contrast to the tendencies which, in Israel, lead to the forgetting of the significance of Zionism for the whole of the diaspora, and, in the United States, contribute to the dissolution of the latter. From the point of view of Jews as well as from the point of view of everyone else, one should then conclude that Europe is still this democratic space resisting reduction to the logic of the balance of power. Under these conditions, it embodies the last perspective from which a political future remains conceivable.

This choice of a democratic future is the one that was made in mid-February in Austria, with the end of negotiations for a coalition between the conservative party (ÖVP) and Herbert Kickl’s sovereignist and authoritarian party (FPÖ). The disagreement concerned, beyond the maximalist desire of the far right to take over the main ministries, the relationship with the fundamental values of European politics and the way to position oneself in the face of Russian aggression. Finally, a pro-European government has been formed, led by Chancellor Christian Stocker and bringing together conservatives, liberals and social democrats, which is very much to be welcomed. Fearing Kickl’s accession to power, K. had asked Liam Hoare for a portrait of the man who proposed to build the “Fortress Austria”. We are publishing it in an updated version, as a testament to what Austria, and Europe, have escaped.

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The Brutalist, after enjoying great success in theaters, has just won three Oscars. But how does Brady Corbet’s film capture the story it intends to tell, that of a famous Hungarian-Jewish architect who survived the Shoah, at the risk of distorting it? Albert Levy reviews this successful film, adding to the informed details of the architect the sensitivity of someone who knows that you don’t leave the United States for Israel simply because “The whole country is rotten”.

Three coffins paraded in front of propaganda images, against a background of triumphant music, before being handed over to the Red Cross: this was the image that extinguished the hope that, despite everything, had endured since October 7. The return of the bodies of the Bibas children and their mother, and the revelation of their abject murder, reactivate this unfortunately real nightmare, in which antisemitic hatred is unleashed on the symbol of the continuity of Jewish life: children. In the face of this crime, there is really nothing to say, and one should be able to feel one’s rage in peace: those who committed it are already beyond redemption. But some have allowed themselves the luxury of forgetting the perversity of the Hamas exterminators, while others have simply never accepted it: in the face of the crime, in the very face of its victims, they see only “Zionist propaganda”. It is therefore necessary to name things once again. Bruno Karsenti’s text serves as a reminder of what hope the Bibas family was called. And, on the day after the funeral of Shiri Bibas and her two children, we are republishing “Kfir’s Rattle” by Joseph Ziegler, who in December 2023 was able to say a few words that were just right for the thoughts that we had at the time about the captivity of this hostage who had already become a symbol. “Kfir, wherever you are, hope with us,” wrote the author at the time. The hope was in vain.

Fortunately, there are still at least a few crumbs of hope left, and the current situation requires that we know how to seize them when they present themselves. So here’s the good news: the AfD’s scores in this weekend’s German federal elections were certainly significant, but less than what those in the West and the East who already see Europe as dead and buried would have liked. Then, the victory speech given by Friedrich Merz, the leader of the CDU, attempted to rise to the historic challenge, emphasizing the need to organize Europe’s military independence from Americans who have become “largely indifferent to its fate”. That the man who, a few weeks ago, got a motion through the Bundestag with the support of the AfD is now preparing to become Chancellor of Germany is, on the other hand, less reassuring. One can only hope that the insistence with which he ruled out any collaboration with this far-right party after the elections will survive the reality test that is the construction of a coalition in an increasingly fragmented German political landscape. We are therefore re-sharing the rich and detailed investigation by Monty Ott into the history of the AfD, so that we can appreciate what Europe has just escaped.

The speech delivered in Munich by the American Vice-President J. D. Vance made one thing clear – at least to the fringe of the European conscience that has managed to remain lucid: Europe, which has been lethargic for years now, and this despite the looming threats that Vance only had the dubious merit of pronouncing aloud, must pull itself together. However, pulling itself together – and however important it is to reflect on a common European defense policy – cannot be limited to taking realpolitik into account. On this point, we must be sensitive to the diagnosis in the form of a snub that Vance addressed to us, deploring the supposed divorce of Europe from the democratic values and freedom of expression so dear to the United States, even as the Trumpist regime is taking the path of open authoritarianism and systematic censorship. In the absence of a strong conception of Europe and its political vocation, there is a risk that the same path will be followed. That the lethargy of a liberalism that has long since ceased to reflect on the political basis of its existence will be succeeded by the very real nightmare of a sovereignism subservient to the great powers and playing “democracy” against the law.

In the very short term, that of the decisive federal elections that will take place in Germany this weekend, this nightmare has a name: AfD. We are therefore publishing a text by Monty Ott on the history of this movement, and the democratic cataclysm that the collaboration of conservative parties with the far right would represent. Vance also indicated where his allies were to be found, by meeting the AfD’s candidate for the chancellorship, Alice Weidel, and by describing the treatment of this party as a “denial of democracy”. We also know about the sympathies that unite the international networks of the far right with Putin’s Russia. The paradox is only apparent: the sovereignism of “national preference” becomes subservient to the great policies of national power, insofar as it knows no other policy than force.

It is against this threat that Europe must be able to formulate the exceptional nature of its political project, which is rightly based on a distrust, acquired in the trials of history, of any policy of power. Today, it is the fate of the “small nations”, that of a dizzying experience of the precariousness of their existence, that must illuminate the destiny of Europe and lead it to pull itself together. The clouds are gathering over the very principle of their existence, but, as Ukraine has been able to demonstrate over the past two years, the “small nation” is not without resources. To support this point, we are publishing an account by Joseph Roche of how Odessa, and within it the “small Jewish nation”, was able to survive the war.

And, to accompany this diagnosis, we are republishing Danny Trom’s text “Kundera politique”. It is worth remembering, that for Kundera, Israel was the “small nation par excellence”, and that the political alternative taking shape there makes it the outpost of what Europe must be led to achieve for itself: in adversity, they are united.

The truce between Israel and Hamas, which recent developments suggest may be short-lived, is making for a deplorable spectacle. On both sides, the grim reality of the situation is obscured by boastful proclamations. On the Hamas side, they cry “victory” over a field of ruins and corpses, with utter disregard for the fate of the Gazan population for whom the group has no other agenda than that of martyrdom. On the Israeli side, even as society is moved by the parade of emaciated hostages organized by Hamas, Netanyahu and his allies are rejoicing in the parodies of “solutions” announced with unheard-of levity by President Donald Trump. For a misguided Zionism, any evasion of the Palestinian question is already a victory in itself. Therein lies the secret intelligence that unites the contrasting plans for the future of Gaza: whether the terrorists dig their tunnels again under the feet of destitute civilians, or whether Gaza becomes an ultraliberal paradise for tourists after a forced displacement of its population, it is the political character of the situation that will have been obliterated. Because, on both sides, the aim is to establish a simple balance of power between powers measuring themselves against their capacity for destruction. Faced with this brutal depoliticization of the issues, and their derealization, we wanted to present another depiction of the situation, which cannot be described as a victory for anyone. K. therefore acts as a conduit for a Palestinian voice, that of Ihab Hassan, first published in the American magazine Liberties, who thinks in the only politically viable terms: those of a conflict between two equally just national claims, pointing to the prospect of a two-state solution.

Since this issue seems decidedly devoted to the political question and the difficulties of relating to otherness, we are publishing a reflection on a philosopher who articulated the responsibility involved in confronting the face of the other in its destitution. In his text, Jean-François Rey shows us that Levinas’ thought, far from being confined to the sphere of ethics, has a truly political dimension, which places it where one would not expect it.

Finally, why do some historians of antisemitism absolutely reject any analogy between October 7 and historical anti-Jewish persecution? Matthew Bolton situates this debate, with its far-reaching political implications, on an epistemological level, explaining why “historicists” refuse to conceive of antisemitism as “eternal hatred”. In return, he exposes the flawed nature of their method, which ends up dissolving the very concept of antisemitism by obliterating its historical necessity.

In Austria, as elsewhere in Europe, the ranks of the far right are steadily growing, and it is highly likely that the FPÖ will soon be able to appoint a Nazi-admiring chancellor in the form of Herbert Kickl. K. will soon be documenting this worrying prospect. In the meantime, it’s interesting to place it in a more general political context, that of an Austria grappling with its past, with a young but already crumbling social democracy, torn between backward-looking conservatism and a certain intellectual and artistic vitality. Viennese filmmaker and writer Ruth Beckermann’s documentaries bear precious witness to this recent era. Here, Liam Hoare interviews her about her political and artistic commitments, and their link to a Jewishness that could not be expressed in Austrian political language.

Stéphane Mandelbaum lived a life as raw and transgressive as his art. With the current Drawing Center exhibtion in New York in mind, Mitchell Abidor explores the tortured Belgian-Jewish artist’s turbulent journey—one shaped by his Jewish identity, dyslexia, and fixation on both society’s rebels and its villains and a love for alternative and ground-breakin artists, from Francis Bacon to Pierre Goldman. Mandelbaum left behind a body of work that is both haunting and confrontational, forcing viewers to grapple with the boundaries between art, crime, and identity.

For K., if there are still a few intact snippets left to build on, they are to be found in Europe. Dispersed, weakened, undermined by falsely universalist and vainly critical postures, they are nonetheless still alive in many of the consciences of European countries – indeed, in the majority of them. Our task is to offer them the intellectual means to express themselves more and better than is currently the case. It is also the duty imposed on Europe by Trump’s victory: to reconnect with its project. And for this, using the modern Jewish question as a spur is certainly not the option least suited to the constraints of the present. So we end this week’s issue with a critique, formulated from the current political wanderings of Jews, of what makes contemporary progressivism so inconsistent in the face of the push from the reactionary camp.

Do we still know what is meant by the concept of antisemitism? The debates that have stirred up the academic world since October 7 raise doubts on this subject: for eminent specialists, it would be impossible to reconcile the crimes of Hamas, and their aftermath, with the historical persecutions that have targeted Jews. Any analogy between the two would have to be treated as intrinsically suspect, since it would obliterate the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by invoking an eternal, ancient anti-Jewish hatred. But then, how consistent is the concept of antisemitism? Matthew Bolton’s article rigorously restores the epistemological and political presuppositions of this controversy between the “historicist” and “eternalist” positions, giving us the means to overcome its aporias. What we have to think about is neither an immutable hatred, nor an incident that happens to Jews, but the trace in the present of a past that never ends.

As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp by the Red Army this week, and the testimonies of the last survivors, it is precisely this question of the permanence of traces that should stir the European conscience. For the latter, “Auschwitz”, the name of something that had to be avoided at all costs, has been the point of consensus that has enabled a common political orientation to emerge since the Second World War. Europe had stitched itself together around “Never again”. But today, the thread seems to have snapped, and the consensus shattered. Indeed, at the very moment when the reference to Auschwitz is imposed on all, we can see that it has been emptied of its substance, since there is divergence as to the obligation it implies for the present. The core of “Never again” is now open to competing and incompatible interpretations. As Ruben Honigmann suggests in his account of his own encounter with the living memory of genocide, “The page of the Shoah is turned. All that remains are obscene recuperations”. If that’s the case, we’d better take note of it, because what’s at stake is the political identity of Europe, and the future of the Jews who remain there. In addition to his text, we enclose a special feature bringing together a number of contributions published in K. on the subject of distortions of the history of the genocide and the difficult context in which it is transmitted today.

As we commemorate this weekend the 80th anniversary of the discovery of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp by the Red Army, and the testimonies of the last survivors, it is precisely this question of the permanence of traces that should stir the European conscience. For the latter, “Auschwitz”, the name of something that had to be avoided at all costs, has been the point of consensus that has enabled a common political orientation to emerge since the Second World War. Europe had stitched itself together around “Never again”. But today, the thread seems to have snapped, and the consensus shattered. Indeed, at the very moment when the reference to Auschwitz is imposed on all, we can see that it has been emptied of its substance, since there is divergence as to the obligation it implies for the present. The core of “Never again” is now open to competing and incompatible interpretations. As Ruben Honigmann suggests in his account of his own encounter with the living memory of genocide, “The page of the Shoah is turned. All that remains are obscene recuperations”. If that’s the case, we’d better take note of it, because what’s at stake is the political identity of Europe, and the future of the Jews who remain there. In addition to his text, we enclose a special feature bringing together a number of contributions published in K. on the subject of distortions of the history of the genocide and the difficult context in which it is transmitted today.

Is Israel finally getting out of the stalemate it has been in for months? With the conclusion of a ceasefire in Gaza and the return of Israeli hostages, this is indeed what we can hope for. Bruno Karsenti and Danny Trom extend this week’s analysis, based on the failure of Israel to articulate the objective of eliminating Hamas with that of rescuing the hostages. We can only rejoice that the balance is now tipping in the direction of the latter, refocusing Israeli policy by marginalizing the most extreme bangs of Zionism. But those who sincerely believe in the possibility of a political solution between Israelis and Palestinians must not forget that the prospect of genuine peace will remain remote as long as Hamas maintains its yoke on Gaza, and as long as the manner in which the war was waged and its toll on civilian populations have not been examined.

If, within the human community, the Jews appear to be marked by an irreducible difference, it is because of the nature of the promise that guided their emergence from Egypt, and the law in which this promise took concrete form. Now, if it is through this founding moment that the Jewish people come into their own, and if it is as guardians of this law that they find their place among the Nations, the question arises as to what this symbolic origin systematically objects to. The book of Judges, an analysis of which we are publishing this week by Ivan Segré, illustrates what is at stake in the Jewish people’s fidelity to its own law, on the occasion of a trial that has echoes in today’s situation: the conquest of the Promised Land. Questioning the political implications of the rejection of idolatry, Segré highlights the need to eliminate the phallic and bellicose impulse that runs deep in the timeless depths of humanity.

To mark the magazine’s 200th issue, we are republishing the ‘manifesto’ that accompanied its creation. Nearly four years have passed, with their share of upheavals and recompositions, but the diagnosis we made in it still seems relevant today: Europe has lost sight of its “Jewish question”, one of the reasons for its decline, and it is from the unstable position Jews occupy within it that a horizon can be opened up.