# 197 / Editorial

The magazine’s editorial team would like to thank all those who are contributing to its campaign to support its continuation and development in 2025.

To begin the year on a high note, we offer you a selection of the seven most popular articles in a period marked by the need to combat the rise of antisemitism in Europe, and the questioning of Israel’s future. This is your chance to delve, or dive back, into the publications that have been the most widely read and shared: Ben Wexler on the curious variation of anti-Zionist formulas taking shape in Canada; Eva Illouz responds to Didier Fassin on whether Israel is committing a genocide; writer Etgar Keret’s interview on the loss of consistency in the reality experienced by Israelis; Balazs Berkovits on the October 7th pogrom as a non-event on the Western left; interview with Dara Horn on her book and the question it bring up on why ‘People love dead Jews’; Noémie Issan-Benchimol and Elie Beressi on the concept of the “Arab Jew” and its political uses; and finally, a two-part series by Balazs Berkovits on ‘What color are the Jews?’.

Since the time for good resolutions is fast approaching, we’re taking advantage of a strange letter received from the depths of eternity to make our own. This letter was sent to us by an esteemed contributor to the magazine, whose sharp pen is unrivalled when it comes to ferreting out stupidity. In it, he aptly captures the sense of the struggle that has breathed life into the magazine for almost 4 years, and to which we have not finished devoting our energies: not to let the link that unites Jews to Europe fade away.

Among all the more or less pleasant letters sent to the K. editorial team , one in particular warmed our hearts, so much so that Julia Christ read it out at our K. on stage evening in Paris in December. It comes from one of our most esteemed contributors who, paradoxically, has just discovered that he writes for the magazine.

In Canada, a fresh iteration of anti-Judaism takes shape. Ben Wexler, a recent graduate from McGill University in Montreal, watched with alarm as a wave of attacks swept through his hometown’s Jewish community. A series of firebombings, shootings, and vandalism targeted Jewish schools, synagogues, community centres, and businesses, beginning after October 7 and continuing into the present. At the same time, protests against Israel often cross into explicit antisemitism and incitement. Wexler notes a curious variation on anti-Zionist formulas: Canada’s Jews – the Diaspora’s third-largest community, at 300,000 strong – are regarded as a distinctly ‘settler’ population, alongside the Yishuv and the modern state of Israel.

Is Israel committing a “genocide” in Gaza? This is what Didier Fassin suggests in an article recently published on the French AOC magazine website. Bruno Karsenti, Jacques Ehrenfreund, Julia Christ, Jean-Philippe Heurtin, Luc Boltanski and Danny Trom have already responded in the same media. In K., Eva Illouz criticises the sociologist’s method, which skews his entire argument. In her view, “in the troubled times we live in, choosing the right words is a moral and intellectual duty”. Published in partnership with Philosophie Magazine.

Etgar Keret is a leading Israeli writer, whose talent for blending the mundane with the magical is appreciated both in Israel and abroad. In this interview conducted by Emmy Barouh a week ago, Keret evokes the feeling that, since October 7 and as the government plunges the country into war, the reality experienced by Israelis is losing its consistency, and escaping any grip they may have had on it.

Since the 7th of October we are appalled by the continuous flow of reactions denouncing Israel and only Israel. We are especially appalled by those that come out of academic institutions, articulated by scholars and intellectuals. But should we be surprised and shocked? Was this response to the atrocities committed by Hamas, aided by their civilian Palestinian collaborators, not entirely predictable? Have not these same people, departments, student bodies, activists, etc. been saying the same thing for at least the last two decades? Of course, they have, and a number of them didn’t even hide their glee as the full story of the massacre, the sexual violence and the kidnapping emerged.

Dara Horn is a journalist, essayist and professor of Yiddish and Hebrew literature. In this interview, she talks about what prompted her to write People Love Dead Jews in 2021, and the question this book explores: why do dead Jews arouse so much more interest than living Jews? Between the ritualization of a sterilized memory of the Holocaust, fascination with the figure of the Jew reduced to helpless victimhood and denial of the actuality of antisemitism, Dara Horn questions the deeply ambiguous way in which the West, and America in particular, relates to Jews, and to the ghosts they evoke.

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”.

How did Jews come to be defined as “white” by a critical discourse in vogue today? Why do we label Jews as dominant or privileged – and Israel as a colonial entity practicing apartheid motivated by Jewish and white supremacism? Part one of an essay by Balázs Berkovits on the supposed color of Jews…

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