If further proof were needed of the authoritarian slope on which the Israeli government is currently sliding down on, it can be found in the treatment it reserves for critical intellectuals. Such is the case of Eva Illouz, a long-standing contributor to the K.: her nomination for the Israel Prize has just been challenged by the Israeli Minister of Education on the grounds that she is spreading an “anti-Israeli ideology”, an accusation which in its latest developments is evolving towards that of a betrayal of the Jewish people. To revisit this affair and what it reveals about the state of Israeli democracy, Eva Illouz agreed to answer our questions. In this interview, she discusses her uncomfortable position, in which the vice tightening its grip on Jews who have not forgotten their attachment to progressivism is refracted: “traitors” to left-wing universalism for their defense of the Zionist idea, “traitors” to Israel for their criticism of the authoritarianism of its government and for their defense of the rights of the Palestinians…
That after the Armenian genocide and the Shoah, the genocidal passion is by no means extinguished is revealed by the crimes committed in Rwanda in 1994, by their unprecedented scale and their systematic nature of execution of each member of the Tutsi people, targeted both individually and indiscriminately. At a time when the survivors are growing old and the denial of the crime that struck them continues to circulate, and when the contemporary uses of the term genocide denote a desire to anathematize rather than to make the situation intelligible, it seemed necessary to us to recall what the memory of the genocide entails. This is why we are republishing a report written in 2007 for Charlie Hebdo by Stéphane Bou, who questions the duration of the Tutsi genocide and the memorial work specific to this ordeal.
Everyone appreciates chocolate eggs, and the flavor of Easter lamb (or whatever is used instead) is ultimately fairly consensual. More discriminating is the appetite for the miracle of resurrection and the redemption of sins. But if there is one exceptional dish that only some people know how to appreciate, it is that of the exchange of words. On the occasion of Passover and the Seder meal, Ivan Segré has entrusted us with a text questioning what we find to sink our teeth into during this “feast of words”, where the story of a liberation that is still in the process of being accomplished is shared. Comparing it to the Greco-Roman banquet, he highlights the Jewish opposition to the use of freedom and speech exercised by the masters.
