# 200 / Editorial

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 200^th 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.

Bruno Karsenti and Danny Trom examine the implications of this ceasefire agreement, which, while returning Israel to the sense of its historic mission, leaves the threat of Hamas unresolved and calls the form taken by the military operations carried out for over a year into question.

In the name of what promise, and what law, is the conquest of the promised land justified? Ivan Segré proposes a reading of the book of Judges, whose structure reveals the need to put to death the phallic, warmongering impulse that, yesterday as today, alienates Israel from its foundation.

A year ago, K. magazine opened a space for discussion and debate that focuses on the condition of European Jews and uses it as a lens to rethink the European situation. It is founded on the diagnosis of a double crisis, evidenced by antisemitism and concern about the continued presence of Jews in Europe on the one hand, and the difficulty for Europe to define its political horizon on the other. It takes as its starting point the conviction that, without being conflated, the two crises are linked and must be dealt with together. This text is an expanded version of the manifesto published in the first issue.

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Thanks to the Paris office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation for their cooperation in the design of the magazine’s website.