Edito

Can morality justify stupidity? This is indeed what the recent adoption by the EHESS of a motion calling for the “suspension of cooperation” with Israeli universities leads us to fear, without clearly naming what is being targeted: the boycott. For if it is France’s most prestigious social science institution – to which K. ‘s academics are attached – that places itself in the vanguard of the boycott camp, in defiance of any reflection on the political efficacy of its actions, then docte and sanctimonious stupidity has a bright future ahead of it. Fortunately, within the progressive left, the voice of European political and historical responsibility has not yet been silenced. At the end of November, Raphaël Glucksmann and Daniel Cohn-Bendit made their voices heard in the columns of Le Monde, with an article condemning the form of the war being waged by Israel, and clearly indicating the political course their authors believe should be followed. The editors of K. were keen to give it some echo, and so we are publishing the interview given by Daniel Cohn-Bendit to Julia Christ and Danny Trom. It discusses his relationship as a “non-nationalizable” European Jew to Israel and Zionism, the unbearable situation in the Middle East and its paradoxical echoes here at home, as well as the stumbling blocks of European construction and integration. Above all, it highlights the need to fight against the foolishness to which the left has fallen victim, and of which the desire to boycott institutions that produce knowledge, reflexivity and criticism is only the latest occurrence.

After the success of the K. on stage evening at the Théâtre de la Concorde in Paris two weeks ago, dedicated to The Last Jews of… , we wanted to make the performances available. This week, you can discover or rediscover the text of Ruben Honigmann’s speech, in which he evokes the strange equivocation of Hebrew, which associates the end and the continuation, as if the Jews were never finished.

For our re-run this week, David Nirenberg’s lecture, “Anti-Judaism, Critical Thinking, and the Possibility of History”, examines how anti-Jewish ideas have shaped Western thought and culture over centuries. Nirenberg explores how influential thinkers—from the ancient world to modern times—have used Judaism as a symbol of everything they oppose in their quest for universal truth. By exposing these patterns, Nirenberg challenges historians to recognize the biases that shape historical narratives and to rethink the possibilities of history itself.

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The review’s editorial team would like to thank all those who are contributing to its campaign to support its continuation and development in 2025.

In Poland, an inescapable guilty conscience and an antisemitism that has never been combated prevent recognition of the Polish realities of the Shoah. This denial of responsibility, and the affabulations that accompany it, are perpetuated at state level and in the institutions in charge of remembrance policy. This week we publish “Négationnisme à la polonaise” by Elżbieta Janicka, a specialist in antisemitism and the Shoah, introduced by Jean-Charles Szurek. We discover the exemplary case of the Treblinka site, which, 80 years on, continues to make its money on the backs of the Jews. From the concealment of the sinister trade that took place at the station, to the invention of a false Righteous Man, the Catholicization of the victims and the attribution to the Germans of massacres of Jews committed by Poles, a whole series of narrative special effects are used to transform a shameful history into a source of national pride.

To feel ashamed implies to be exposed to public scrutiny: this is what Polish Holocaust deniers have understood, and they seek to avoid this painful experience by hiding their horrors under the carpet. But does this mean that pointing an accusing finger at others is enough to shame them? This is the strategy employed today by those who claim “Zionists, you should be ashamed”. But is there really anything to be ashamed of, when you know what Zionism means? This week, we publish a reflection by Ariel Colonomos on the way in which anti-Zionist activists seek to shame their opponents, and the deleterious effects of this strategy on university debates. It discusses the paradoxes of approaching a political conflict through the prism of morality, and the deficit of reflexivity that arises when shaming is substituted for criticism.

We are also resharing the interview of Julia Christ with Israeli academics on how they react to the call for a boycott of their universities. The responses of the rector of the Hebrew University Tamir Sheafer have been added for this week’s publication. 

Since the start of the war in Gaza and its extension to Lebanon, several voices have been calling for a boycott of Israeli universities, always specifying that this should target only the universities as institutions and not the people working there. These initiatives claim to be aimed at increasing pressure on Israel to change its policies, end the war and recommit to a peace process with the Palestinians, and are justified by the argument that any Israeli university, by the mere fact of its existence, supports the policies of the Hebrew state. Yet there are serious grounds for doubting both the political effectiveness of these boycott practices and the representations that motivate them. To clarify the relationship between Israeli universities and the Netanyahu government, and to lift the veil on their role and functioning in the current conflict and within Israeli society, K. interviewed Professors Itai Ater and Alon Korngreen, members of the “Academics for Israeli Democracy” group, and Professor Eyal Benvenisti.

For contemporary critics of religious Zionism, its messianic fever is above all a consequence of its religiosity. Thus posed, the problem admits of only one solution: for life in Israel to be a negation neither of exile nor of Palestinian rights, Zionism can only be secular. In this personal reading of Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin’s latest essay, Mishnaic Consciousness, Biblical Consciousness: Safed and Zionist Culture (Kibbutz Ha-Meuhad and Van Leer Institute Publishing, 2022), Noémie Issan-Benchimol offers another normative support for our critique: the proto-Zionist model of Safed, for whose consciousness exile is lived par excellence in Israel. By pointing to the ideal of an articulation between law and mysticism, another possibility is opened up. Or does it already have the status of a realization?

By what kind of ideological caper is it possible for a nationalist, reactionary discourse to be adopted by the anti-imperialist left? This is the question, unfortunately of current interest, that the first part of Daniel Szeftel’s article left us with two weeks ago. How, indeed, did the ideologues of Arab nationalism manage, after the war, to make people forget their sympathies for European fascism, and make their discourse audible to the Western world? In the continuation of his investigation, Szeftel meticulously studies the process of reformulation that enabled this ideology to become attractive, and the political, academic and international networks that contributed to its dissemination. Accusing Israel of “genocide” against the indigenous Palestinian people appears to have been a decisive factor in this transformation, making it possible to maintain an essentialist conception of national identity, while attributing to the Jews the racist tendencies that flow from it.

Last week, the International Criminal Court’s issuance of arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant provoked vehement and contrasting reactions within the international community. But beyond the political dimension, what are the legal implications of this decision? K. went to interview legal expert Yann Jurovics – whom we had already interviewed about the proceedings initiated by South Africa before the International Court of Justice, as well as about the request to issue arrest warrants before the ICC last May.

Between the anti-Zionist excesses of the Western left and the reactionary ravings of the Israeli far right, it is no easy task today to assume a coherent critical position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s like walking a tightrope, where every misstep can have serious ideological consequences. Among the talented tightrope walkers of our time is Mitchell Cohen, former editor-in-chief of Dissent magazine, whose interview we are publishing this week. In it, he articulates an uncompromising critique of contemporary anti-Zionism, reminding us that this is not the first time the Left has confused the perspective of emancipation with the defense of oppressive political movements. But he also reminds us of the need for an uncompromising critique of the policies pursued by Israel over the past 30 years, in other words, a questioning of the nature of the society that Zionism aims to realize. As Trump’s victory has come to question the American political situation, we asked Mitchell Cohen about the reasons for his election, and what it means for American Jews.

What’s left of Polish Jewry? Around 10,000 people, and a few well-kept cemeteries. This week, we are publishing the first part of a report by American journalist Gabriel Rom, devoted to the preservation of the burial heritage of Poland’s Jews, and the strange ambivalence of memory that this reflects. The conservative Polish government had devoted substantial sums of money to the restoration of Jewish cemeteries, while at the same time spending years constructing a national narrative that was intended to be free of grey areas. Even going so far as to criminalize the idea that Poland was responsible for the Holocaust. The burden of memory – a memory laden with guilt – is met with silence and denial, with the result that Poland struggles to fully honor its participation in a European Union that has made lucidity about its past a cornerstone of its political identity. But Gabriel Rom’s journey among the tombstones is not limited to well-ordered alleys and heritage-laden names: behind the desire to whitewash history and pretend that Jewishness and Polishness are seamlessly linked, we find moss-covered monuments to the victims of the Holocaust, and plaques whose names have already been almost erased. It is these fragments of a disappearing memory that his report echoes.

It wasn’t long after the start of the Israeli offensive in Gaza that the accusation of genocide against the Jewish state began to emerge. Already on October 7, before any retaliation, the first echoes of it could be heard. For radical anti-Zionists, the genocide has been going on for 75 years, the project to wipe out the indigenous Palestinian people has been unfolding for 75 years, and the genocidal essence of the Zionist state has been asserting itself for 75 years. But where does this “evidence” come from? When, by whom and under what conditions was this implacable equation formulated? And what accounts for its remarkable spread? This week, we begin publication of Daniel Szeftel’s historical investigation of this question, which makes an important contribution to contemporary debates on the notion of settler colonialism. The first part of his diptych deals with the revival of Arab nationalism from the 20s to the 40s, its compromises with European fascism, and the influence of antisemitic Protestant missionaries. For the moment, we are witnessing the structuring of an ideological discourse that, at this stage, openly claims its integral nationalism and eliminationist antisemitism. Next week, we’ll see how, through a curious process of accusatory reversal, this discourse will be hollowed out and reformulated for Western international and academic institutions in the post-war period.

Two Jews who knew each other neither from Eve nor from Adam get on a plane and find themselves sitting next to each other. No, this is not the beginning of a Jewish joke, but a personal account by writer Barbara Honigmann. What could two Jews be talking about when they meet for the first time? And what is at stake in the bond that, for the duration of a flight and despite their differences, is forged between them?

In the mid-1990s, the number of Jews in Algeria did not exceed fifty, whereas 150,000 lived there before independence. And yet… a rumor persists. “Jews in Algeria? There are still some. They are numerous, just about everywhere. They hide. They practice their religion in silence. Without showing themselves. Jews in Algeria? Of course, my grandmother knows some… ” This kind of statement circulates in the Algerian streets, like an urban legend. The Jews are an integral part of Algerian history: Algeria certainly does little to preserve traces of their presence, but in this omission of which the cemeteries are the main clues, the secret is passed on. Joseph Benamour evokes this strange distortion that makes the Jews a fantasized Algerian presence, while they remain untraceable in reality.

Reactions to last week’s Jew-hunt in Amsterdam are hardly surprising. The match pitted well-trained players against each other, masterfully rehearsing a now perfectly integrated game plan. On the left of the pitch, the focus was on minimizing or denying the antisemitic nature of the events, reducing the situation to a brawl between hooligans, or even portraying the well-orchestrated outburst of violence as a legitimate reaction to the racist provocations of certain Israeli fans. On the right, Netanyahu once again forces the comparison by evoking Kristallnacht, his outrage invisibilizing the fact that this is not state-sponsored antisemitism, but a pathology secreted by today’s European societies. His rhetoric is in line with that of the reactionary forces of Europe, always quick to take advantage of any opportunity to howl at the invasion of migrants, and to pretend that Islamists are imposing their law on Europe. In truth, it’s something quite different, which both the far right and the far left are careful not to think about. The event therefore allowed everyone to find their position, without any gain in reflexivity.

Yet there was enough novelty here to offer food for thought, if only insofar as the event came to question the contours of Europe: what was played out in the streets of Amsterdam last Thursday night, was it a home match, or an away one? For years, it has been said that the Israeli-Palestinian or Israeli-Arab conflict should not be allowed to interfere in the internal political life of Europeans. That it would be an illegitimate and dangerous import. But how can we fail to see that this scene of Jew-hunting is an act of the conflict’s entanglement with our political reality, since it obeyed a classically European choreography?

For the Muslim immigrants who hunted down the Jews did so not in the manner of non-native elements, but in the purest tradition of the European pogrom. In fact, they felt so entitled and so “at home” that they did not hesitate to use state control mechanisms, checking passports to identify Jews. As for the latter, being Israeli on this occasion did not protect them from a typically diasporic experience, the very one that gives the Zionist project its justification.

Here, we must not obscure reality on the grounds that it is unpleasant. Some Jews, Israelis and others, have effectively forgotten the significance of the minority status of European Jews, and its implications in terms of attachment to the law and the defense of minorities. What better proof of the existence of what Bruno Karsenti calls the “Jews committed to force”, and of what it implies in terms of the repression of the European experience, than the fact that Jews can feel so “at home” in Europe that they feel authorized to adopt a provocative and assertive attitude, to flaunt a crass nationalism and racism? Paradoxically, as they distance themselves from European Jewish consciousness, their rhetoric and actions become indistinguishable from those of European reactionaries. We need to be able to denounce them outright, to criticize them in the name of that European Jewish condition they have forgotten. Only then can we clearly condemn attempts to justify the hunting of Jews by the provocations of a minority of agitators. They are, after all, nothing more than the reactivation of an old European thought pattern: seeing the very existence of Jews as a provocation.

The text by Henriette Asséo and Claudia Moatti that we are publishing this week is surprisingly topical in the wake of the events in Amsterdam. For the paradoxes in the aftermath of October 7 that these two great historians identify and analyze are clearly in evidence: how is it that antisemitic violence fuels antisemitic hatred throughout the world? Why does part of the left describe reactionary, antisemitic movements as progressive and anti-fascist? And above all, what explains the apparent difficulty of the European conscience to name and fight against what denies its most fundamental principles?

In a different vein, our second text of the week looks at the influence of Jewish fantasy on cinema, although this too is a question of strange repetitions and spectres of European memory. On the occasion of the mahJ exhibition “The dybbuk. Phantom of the lost world” (until January 26), David Haziza examines the cinematic posterity of this creature of popular Jewish culture. What do these wandering souls that come to possess the living tell us?

To close this issue, we are re-sharing two short pieces by our esteemed collaborator Karl Kraus: “Matters viewed (Jewishly)”. Unfortunately, stupidity never takes a vacation, so he had to stay on the ball and spend the summer tracking it down, even in the scribbles of a bad joker. But this need to stay on the lookout, this impossibility of letting the mind take a vacation in a world that seems to know only the logic of the worst, is tiring. In this fatigue, everyone can easily recognize themselves.

Here we are. Trump at the helm of the world’s leading power, tilting towards populist, illiberal nationalism. Israel assumes war as the sole axis of its policy, while embracing the nationalist and religious tendencies that are deepening its break with Zionism. The BRICS, a conglomerate of commercial and military powers, each defending its own interests and ruling over its population with an iron fist. And, in the face of all this, a Europe that is witnessing both its economic decline and its inability to unite around the democratic principles that define it.

It’s not a good time to be a Ukrainian from Donbass, or a Palestinian, West Banker, Gazan or Israeli. Nor is it a good time to be a Jew anywhere in the world. The anti-democratic and nationalist wave that is sweeping over us is bound to weaken any population that stakes its fate on the progress of its rights to an extent unprecedented since 1945. Yet the Jews have been, for themselves since before this date of reconstruction, and for the enlightened conscience that has dominated Western opinion since that same date, the distinctive point and the reliable indicator of the progress made in this direction. The nationalist stupidity that has become the majority wish in the most powerful of democratic societies now threatens to sweep away this tendency, and with it the arrangement on which the relative unity and equilibrium of the Jewish people rested. To give an idea of how Trump’s election risks precipitating an internal rift in the Jewish world, we leave Bruno Karsenti’s text “Trump and the Jewish War” in our issue for another week.

To further clarify the coordinates of the situation, we are adding an interview with journalist and essayist Dara Horn on how the “Jewish question” came to agitate the American campaign, and how it may have been instrumentalized by the various political parties. In it, we read of the ambiguity that results from the mixture of an unshakeable attachment to social progress – undeniable since almost 80% of American Jews voted Democrat – and mistrust of the slope taken by the most radical part of the progressive camp.

For K., if there are still a few intact snippets left to build on, they are to be found in Europe. Dispersed, weakened, undermined by falsely universalist and vainly critical postures, they are nonetheless still alive in many of the consciences of European countries – indeed, in the majority of them. Our task is to offer them the intellectual means to express themselves more and better than is currently the case. It is also the duty imposed on Europe by Trump’s victory: to reconnect with its project. And for this, using the modern Jewish question as a spur is certainly not the option least suited to the constraints of the present. So we end this week’s issue with a critique, formulated from the current political wanderings of Jews, of what makes contemporary progressivism so inconsistent in the face of the push from the reactionary camp.

Next week, we may well have to face the reality of a new term for Donald Trump as President of the United States. Surely, this is a catastrophic prospect for democratic societies. The election of Donald Trump, this time with full knowledge of what he is capable of, would in effect mark the decline of their ideals and standards, and the rise of illiberal nationalist regimes. But what would his election mean for Jews? We know that Trump vacillates between sycophancy towards them, based on admiration for Israel’s strength, and particularly threatening antisemitic remarks, such as when he declares that in the event of his side’s defeat “the Jews will have had a lot to do with it”. The target here are those Jews who are not prepared to renounce democratic ideals out of a lust for power. Bruno Karsenti proposes to analyze the Trump phenomenon as revealing a process of internal division in the Jewish world, which for the moment remains in a state of latent war. A Trumpist victory could then precipitate this rift and endanger not only the balance between the Diaspora and Israel, but the very legitimacy of the Zionist project.

In the second part of “Germany’s Battle Against Antisemitism”, Monty Ott explores Germany’s intensified measures against antisemitism, especially following October 7. From appointing antisemitism commissioners to implementing policies against pro-BDS activism, Germany seeks to safeguard Jewish communities in a challenging balance between security and civil liberties. Yet critics warn these efforts sometimes risk conflating antisemitism with criticism of Israeli policies, sparking freedom of expression concerns. How does a country so deeply haunted by its history avoid instrumentalizing the fight against antisemitism to serve other agendas? As Germany tightens its stance, questions persist about the freedoms that might quietly fall away in the process.

It’s always risky to invite a sociologist to dinner. If you place him in a context where he feels out of step, it’s quite possible that his professional habits will get the better of him, and he’ll begin to produce a critical analysis of the ethos specific to your social milieu. This week, it’s the small world of French academia and diplomacy in Jerusalem that bears the brunt of his implacable gaze. One has to admit that there’s a lot to be astonished by, between the backward-looking orientalism and the persistence of old Catholic thought patterns that continue to irrigate the universalism of the Republic’s servants. But the strangest thing of all, remarks Danny Trom, is the way in which, from the Notre Dame of Jerusalem, the Jewish state appears as scarcely a reality, obvious but kept out of sight.

This week we return to our series exploring the landscape of antisemitism across Europe, in partnership with DILCRAH, and turn our eye to the ongoing struggle against antisemitism in Germany as both a historical and modern issue. Monty Ott draws on philosophical perspectives, emphasizing the need for societal authority and the use of power to confront it. In light of the resurgence of antisemitic violence following Hamas’ attacks in October 2023, Ott explores the tensions surrounding the state’s role in combating this threat. This first part of a two-part investigation delves into controversies, including accusations of political instrumentalization and criticisms of Germany’s response, highlighting the complexity of addressing antisemitism through both legal enforcement and societal dialogue. As Germany grapples with its past, the fight against antisemitism becomes a litmus test for the strength of its democracy.

Not so long ago, antisemitism manifested itself with obvious clarity: “Death to the Jews” shouted men with shaven heads tattooed with swastikas. Things now seem to have become so opaque that the characterization of antisemitism gives rise to endless polemics. The university, in particular, is a regular scene, with many Jewish students perceiving the atmosphere surrounding anti-Zionist mobilizations as threatening to them, but struggling to convince the administration of the accuracy of this perception. And after all, the question thrown back at them is a legitimate one: why are you so certain that this is antisemitism, when no one is talking about targeting Jews as such? To shed light on this problem, Valérie Boussard, professor of sociology at Paris Nanterre, conducted a survey among Jewish students who feel less and less at home at university.

Does the State of Israel need the permission of the nations to exist? At least, that’s what Emmanuel Macron is said to have hinted at in the Council of Ministers. If we insist on remembering that Israel owes its birth to a UN decision, it’s because we think that its existence is conditional on the goodwill of the international community. This is not only a diplomatic error, but also a failure to understand this state and the history of which it is the product. Gabriel Abensour, fired up by the foolishness of our President, made a point of reminding us that the realization of the Zionist project precisely meant the possibility of a Jewish existence that did not depend on anyone’s goodwill.