During this summer break, the magazine suspends its publication of original articles. Until we return in the fall, each issue will feature a special section bringing together some of our articles published this year on a specific theme. Nonetheless, this does not necessarily mean we have turned our backs on current events, which are particularly distressing at the moment.
This week’s feature – “Utopia/Dystopia” – is devoted to proposals for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even those that seem most unreasonable, and which are precisely for this reason the most likely to challenge our assumptions and clear the horizon. However, for the genre of utopia or dystopia to have political value, the projection onto another place must lead us to return to the world we inhabit. The ideal, like the fear of the fictional realization of the absolute, has value only in guiding our actions in reality. Yet today there is a reality that cannot be ignored: in Gaza, the population is threatened by famine, for which the Israeli government is responsible.
In this context, three positions can be identified within the Jewish world. The first is denial: there is no famine in Gaza. Those who refuse to see, in order to defend the State of Israel at all costs, regardless of the distortion of the Zionist ideal evidenced by government policies, must be reminded that no ideal is achieved without a struggle, and that no struggle can be fought with blinders on. The second position acknowledges that there is famine and approves of it: starving the Gazans could push them to flee or turn against Hamas, even if it means the death of thousands of civilians. This position exists, it is articulated, relayed, and defended: we have heard it on Israeli television, and sometimes, in more or less veiled terms, around us. Those who think this way may well claim to be Zionists and defenders of Israel, but they are nonetheless its gravediggers. For in their hands, these signifiers become those of the most vulgar nationalism, ready to sacrifice everything on the altar of force: the lives of Palestinian civilians, but also the dignity of the Jewish people. The conduct of the war in Gaza for nearly two years has shown where this abandonment of all guiding principles leads: nowhere, that is, to a dead end.
Finally, the third position, held by K., asserts that starving a population is unacceptable. It is a crime — a crime that international law, insofar as it judges on the basis of proven facts and manages to extricate itself from the anti-Zionist pressures that have weighed on it for many years, is justified in qualifying as such and must therefore be able to punish. Condemnation is therefore what is required above all other considerations. It stems from a minimum political and moral requirement. So minimal, in fact, that it is shared by our anti-Zionist opponents. This is unpleasant, but it does not make it any less just or less imperative.
However, expressing this condemnation also requires specifying the context in which it is made. The line of reasoning that gives coherence to K.‘s position posits that democratic values as they have been defined in the wake of the Shoah, in particular the attachment to the dignity of human life and the rights of minorities, are consubstantial elements of Zionism, without which it is doomed to self-destruction. This is not a pious wish or a dreamlike description of Zionism, but a political line that must be clearly affirmed and defended, now more than ever. The realization of Zionism as a state meant leaving behind innocence, and Israel has since been responsible for its power. Today, this responsibility means providing the food and goods necessary for the survival of the people of Gaza, since Israel controls access to Gaza and, as the dominant military force in the territory, is responsible for the safety of the people living there. The fact that Hamas exploits and diverts humanitarian aid does not negate these obligations. On the contrary, they are reinforced when one considers that Hamas rejoices in and knows how to take advantage of the repercussions of the tragedy experienced by the people of Gaza on world opinion. The conclusion is clear and must lead to a clear position: hunger and the death of civilians will not bring back the hostages, will not defeat Hamas, and will not lay the foundations for a possible future. Only political initiative will do that. For each of the protagonists, this is currently the most difficult and demanding task—more demanding, in this case, than the symbolic statements from outside that are taking its place. It is also the most necessary.
There is another consideration, which we can only sketch here, since it requires a perspective that we are not yet able to take on the course of events and the fear they are currently arousing. What will become of the modern post-Shoah Jewish experience, with its dual support from the diaspora and Israel, in conditions where Zionism as it has been realized is negating itself? What overall reconfiguration of the Jewish experience are we witnessing? Or rather: what reconfiguration are we about to undergo, under the double blow of a policy conducted for the benefit of the Jewish people but clearly off the rails, and, in the West, of a parallel deviation that rushes to attest to crimes committed by the Jewish state in order to revive antisemitism with a clear conscience? We are currently teetering on this edge, with no real horizon in sight. The role of K. must be to identify one, where the modern Jewish experience can continue to project itself without betraying itself.
The texts we are publishing this week attest to a keen awareness of the political path, which is the only one that can be taken. On the side of utopia, which offers a way out of the current despair, we invite you to reread our presentation of the project “A Land for All” and the interview with its co-founder Meron Rapoport. On the dystopian side, which sheds a harsh light on the dead ends of the present, we are republishing Noémie Issan-Benchimol’s text on the successful Israeli series Autonomies, which imagines Israel splitting into two irreconcilable camps. Then there are projects that are so extravagant that it is difficult to know where to classify them, but which nonetheless emit a fascinating glow: such as the historical fiction of Guy Konopnicki or the movement of Israeli artist Ronen Eidelman, both of which imagine the creation of a Jewish state in Europe, whether in Vienna or Weimar.
