This morning we woke up to the news we have been waiting for for two years. The hostages are coming back and a ceasefire will be put into place. Mixed in with an immense sense of relief and many hopes for the future is a strong sense of loss and pain for the past two years, which has been well documented in our pages in that time. Even if things seem to be moving towards a better future, this does not mean that, as the fog of war clears, we can dispense with making a diagnosis of what has happened and where it is leading us.
Two days ago marked two years since then. Since what? Since a massacre that took place there, in Israel, but which nevertheless involves us here in Europe. However, what we Europeans are is clearly no longer obvious. What happened on October 7 remains somewhat unclear, because the European community that found itself involved immediately became divided over what it had just experienced collectively. The commemorations and demonstrations that took place yesterday across Europe once again bore witness to this radical division. Was October 7 a new occurrence of Islamist terrorism, or the beginning of the destruction of Gaza? Did we witness an episode in the Palestinian people’s struggle for liberation, or the greatest antisemitic massacre since the Shoah, immediately followed here by a resurgence of hatred toward Jews? Europe is hesitating, and in this hesitation it is putting at stake what it is and what the future of its policy will be. For the past two years, K. has sought to assess October 7 as a European event, but also to examine what its aftermath has revealed about the evolution of Israel and its relations with the diaspora and the international community. Throughout October, K. will revisit these issues with a series of in-depth analyses. Philosopher Bruno Karsenti opens this cycle with the nagging question of memory—and thus the possibility that something has come to a close. His diagnosis acknowledges that, while October 7 revealed the wavering and division of post-Shoah European consciousness, the political conflict of interpretations is stabilizing.
Are we still in the aftermath, and how can we find our bearings in what is to come? What does the transition from trauma to memory require? First, undoubtedly, the possibility of integrating what has happened into a story—always at the crossroads of the personal and the collective—the traumatic experience must be able to be told. But, as psychologists Miri Bar-Halpern and Jaclyn Wolfman point out, a narrative is only effective if it can be told to someone who will listen and take it into account. However, in the context of the aftermath of October 7 and its conflicts of interpretation, this possibility has been sorely lacking for many Jews in the diaspora. By proposing the concept of “traumatic invalidation” in a scientific article that has met with a surprising response, Bar-Halpern and Wolfman put words to this contemporary dimension of the Jewish traumatic experience and shed light on the psychological effects of what amounts to a true denial of empathy. Their important work is presented here by clinical psychologist Céline Masson.
Europe is obviously not the only place to have fractured in the aftermath of October 7, and the ability to empathize is also an issue for those who have experienced trauma themselves. In a short story drawn from his daily experience in Israel, writer Etgar Keret points out that Israelis no longer understand each other, to the point that they would need to invent a new language to be able to communicate again. However, he raises a difficult question: how can we make room for the trauma experienced by Palestinians?
