Wonderful times we live in. Did you dream it was possible to be an ultra-Zionist, a great friend of Netanyahu, and at the same time antisemitic and revisionist? To attack the cosmopolitan cabal of George Soros and his henchmen in the European Union, accusing them of being antisemitic? Viktor Orbán, self-proclaimed friend of Israel and the Jewish people, has done just that, and it’s hard not to see the toothy grin behind this outstretched hand. This week, in partnership with DILCRAH, János Gadó takes us on a tour of the parallel reality of contemporary Hungary. There, the assertion of “zero tolerance” of antisemitism does not prevent the rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators and the dissemination of hackneyed antisemitic tropes: only political opponents hate Jews anyway. Gadó’s analysis leaves us with the certainty that, really, there are some friendships we could have done without. And it’s not the least fault of the Netanyahu government to nurture them.
Turning to another part of the world, Renan Antônio da Silva and Eric Heinze inspect Brazil’s complex relationship with its Jewish community and its relationship to Zionism. With comments comparing the Gaza war to the Shoah by the once beloved Lula and with Bolsonaro’s prior ultra-Zionist stance, the Jewish community has felt increasingly alienated from its country’s leadership. Brazil, once a refuge for Jews and Arabs, is now facing rising divisions over the Israel-Palestine conflict, the country’s shifting policies and its antisemitic past rising to the surface again.
German philosopher Jürgen Habermas recently celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday. Bruno Karsenti took advantage of the occasion, in an article that is also a tribute, to examine a work that is, as he writes, “the most solid foundation of European construction as a carrier of the universal”. A work that is both German and European, or German and then European. On that note, discover Habermas’ text that we published in K. Indeed, Jürgen Habermas was the first to understand that it was only by facing up to German crime and guilt that we could, as he did, relaunch a European political project. But Jürgen Habermas did not confine himself to this task. Focusing on some of his lesser-known texts, Bruno Karsenti also shows that Jürgen Habermas not only never turned his eyes away from the uniqueness of the crime – even when some of his colleagues began to defend its necessity – but also recalled the specifically Jewish contribution to German philosophy. A contribution that Bruno Karsenti details here, restoring its importance, certainly for today’s Europeans, but also for Jews who have moved away from Europe.
