The crisis that has exploded in Israel is unfolding on two fronts. The unprecedented demonstrations that have punctuated the country’s political life since Netanyahu’s new government embarked on a reform of the judicial system manifest an internal front where Israeli citizens are torn apart over the definition and future of their country. But also outside the state, in the West Bank, where after the murder of two Israelis in the settlement of Har Brakha, hundreds of settlers went on the rampage in Huwara and three neighbouring villages, killing one Palestinian. On this second front, the violence of the religious Zionists expresses the radical nature of a nationalism that acquires a desire for exclusive appropriation of a place, and thus to dispossess the Palestinians. As Bruno Karsenti reminds us, if the State desired by the rioters committing such a gesture (and desired even within the government, as expressed by the Minister of Finance Betsalel Smotrich: “Israel should erase the village of Hawara”), it would no longer be Israel – in any case, the Israel born of historical Zionism, which religious Zionism is now questioning. “In historical Zionism, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Palestinian Arabs belong to this land and hold on to it. Bruno Karsenti’s text – “What We Hold on” – comments on the situation that agitates Israel at the moment, but it also introduces the text of the Palestinian philosopher Sari Nusseibeh – “Belonging and Possession” – delivered on January 24 in Jerusalem during a colloquium dedicated to “Martin Buber and his legacy” and which we are pleased to publish in K. this week. The philosophical exploration of all the meanings associated with the verbs “to belong” and “to possess”, as analytical as it may be, offers us a way to plunge into the heart of the present issues. Indeed, committed to an unwavering principle of non-violence in order to “[find] the way to a certain form of living together” between Jews and Palestinians, the former president of the Palestinian Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem goes through Buber’s work, through Buber’s anguish about the nature and future of Zionism, to express his concern that two peoples should be able to share the same land.
Feminism and Judaism… We republish the report on the Jewish activists of Marseilles who took over the walls of the city to stick their slogans on anti-Semitism and the situation of Jewish women: “Jewish and proud” proclaimed one of them. Yoram Melloul tells the story of the tensions these religious and feminist activists face, as well as their denunciation of the silence of their camp – the left – towards anti-Semitism…
