Last week, the International Criminal Court’s issuance of arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant provoked vehement and contrasting reactions within the international community. But beyond the political dimension, what are the legal implications of this decision? K. went to interview legal expert Yann Jurovics – whom we had already interviewed about the proceedings initiated by South Africa before the International Court of Justice, as well as about the request to issue arrest warrants before the ICC last May.
Between the anti-Zionist excesses of the Western left and the reactionary ravings of the Israeli far right, it is no easy task today to assume a coherent critical position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s like walking a tightrope, where every misstep can have serious ideological consequences. Among the talented tightrope walkers of our time is Mitchell Cohen, former editor-in-chief of Dissent magazine, whose interview we are publishing this week. In it, he articulates an uncompromising critique of contemporary anti-Zionism, reminding us that this is not the first time the Left has confused the perspective of emancipation with the defense of oppressive political movements. But he also reminds us of the need for an uncompromising critique of the policies pursued by Israel over the past 30 years, in other words, a questioning of the nature of the society that Zionism aims to realize. As Trump’s victory has come to question the American political situation, we asked Mitchell Cohen about the reasons for his election, and what it means for American Jews.
What’s left of Polish Jewry? Around 10,000 people, and a few well-kept cemeteries. This week, we are publishing the first part of a report by American journalist Gabriel Rom, devoted to the preservation of the burial heritage of Poland’s Jews, and the strange ambivalence of memory that this reflects. The conservative Polish government had devoted substantial sums of money to the restoration of Jewish cemeteries, while at the same time spending years constructing a national narrative that was intended to be free of grey areas. Even going so far as to criminalize the idea that Poland was responsible for the Holocaust. The burden of memory – a memory laden with guilt – is met with silence and denial, with the result that Poland struggles to fully honor its participation in a European Union that has made lucidity about its past a cornerstone of its political identity. But Gabriel Rom’s journey among the tombstones is not limited to well-ordered alleys and heritage-laden names: behind the desire to whitewash history and pretend that Jewishness and Polishness are seamlessly linked, we find moss-covered monuments to the victims of the Holocaust, and plaques whose names have already been almost erased. It is these fragments of a disappearing memory that his report echoes.
