# 233 / Editorial

Last July, our interview with Yehudah Mirsky allowed us to announce the launch of a new featured section for the magazine, focusing on issues related to religious Zionism and messianism. The more Israel persists in its war on Gaza—and this week’s events have once again demonstrated that, for Netanyahu’s government, the goal of eliminating Hamas takes precedence over peace negotiations—the more these issues are likely to become decisive. For the refusal to end the war makes it possible to avoid having to take a political stance; it consists of settling into a temporality where only the present exists, but which always seems to be on the verge of a major upheaval. Netanyahu promises “final victory” to mask his indecision, but this indecision plays into the hands of the messianists, giving them a gift of hope and fueling their fantasies, sometimes even allowing them to act on them… This week, with the insight of sociologists who have met with them, Perle Nicolle-Hasid and Sylvaine Bulle show us what the dreams of the messianists “really” look like, and where they could lead if they were given free rein to bring about “redemption.” But they also introduce a fundamental problem: the ambivalence that affects the messianic relationship with the Zionist state in its modern form, which is both a means of realizing the dream and a limitation to its realization.

This summer, President Macron and Prime Minister Netanyahu exchanged letters. What did they contain? Beyond cordialities and a series of accusations and counter-accusations, they were an opportunity for the two heads of state to assert their positions on two real problems that concern them more or less directly: the rise of antisemitism in Europe and the future of the Palestinian question. However, as Gérard Bensussan notes in his commentary on this exchange of letters, it leaves one rather pensive, even confused. For the only dialogue that seems to have taken place is a dialogue of the deaf, in which neither interlocutor was keen to clarify the realities of the situation. In fact, it almost seems as if neither of them really cares about antisemitism or Palestine.

Given the success of Danny Trom’s text last week—particularly among the Jewish far right, which reminded us that it is far too virile to experience anxiety or be capable of lamentation—we are leaving “Lamentation and Relentlessness: Gaza with no end in sight” on display for another week. Because there is no other way out: if October 7 showed that even the strong can be forced to lament, then we must make room for this reality, rather than letting it degenerate into a desperate, all-out war.

While messianism undoubtedly represents the most serious internal threat to Israel’s future, it nevertheless comes in many forms. Perle Nicolle-Hasid and Sylvaine Bulle examine its various currents here, starting with a fundamental divergence: the question of the relationship to realized Zionism, i.e., to the state. But whether it is the realists seeking to make the state a tool of messianism, or the purists detaching themselves from it to live according to ancestral Israel, the present of redemption overwhelms the horizon of Zionism.

Parmi les feuilletons politiques de l’été, l’échange épistolaire entre Benjamin Netanyahou et Emmanuel Macron est venu rejouer la scène classique du dialogue de sourds. Au-delà des pantomimes, qui peut en effet dire ce qu’était l’objet de leur correspondance ? Gérard Bensussan s’attache ici à décrypter les motifs d’une incompréhension particulièrement symptomatique de la situation politique actuelle.

How can we explain Israel’s relentless pursuit of this seemingly endless war in Gaza? Danny Trom offers an analysis based on one symptom: the proliferation, since October 7, of kinot, poetic lamentations that are unique to the tradition of exile. Israeli lamentation is thus expressed in the language of exile and powerlessness, even though it now accompanies the war of a state through which Jews have acquired unprecedented power—and therefore a new responsibility. Danny Trom invites us to reflect on this internal tension within this paradox…

In this interview with Danny Trom, Yehudah Mirsky looks back at the intellectual and spiritual roots of religious Zionism, from its internal tensions to its contemporary manifestations. Underlying this is the figure of Rav Kook, a mystic and visionary who is now claimed by the most opposing factions of the Israeli religious Zionist scene. One question arises out of this exploration: how did a movement born of an ideal of reconciliation between tradition and modernity partly derive into becoming the vehicle for an aggressive nationalist messianism.

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