Accused by the Israeli Minister of Education Yoav Kisch of “anti-Israeli ideology”, sociologist Eva Illouz has seen her nomination for the Israel Prize contested. She revisits the affair, denounces the authoritarian excesses of the Netanyahu government and defends an intellectual position that is at once critical, universalist and deeply attached to the State of Israel. For her, “this government acts as if those who fight to prevent Israel from becoming a pariah state were enemies”.
How did you interpret the desire, expressed by the Minister of Education Yoav Kisch, that you should not be awarded the Israel Prize because of your supposed “anti-Israel ideology”? Did you feel that a threshold had been crossed, a symbolic shift?
Eva Illouz : The shift did not happen with me. I remind you that Oded Goldreich, a mathematician, was denied the prize – in 2021 – on the pretext that he had signed a petition calling for a boycott of Ariel University, located in the West Bank. His case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled very clearly in the mathematician’s favor. In my case, it was because in 2021 I had signed a petition that went to the Hague Tribunal and called for an investigation into possible war crimes committed by the Israeli army against Palestinians.
Let me remind you of the context: for more than 50 years, Israel has facilitated the settlement of a Jewish population in the West Bank and given them legal rights superior to those of the Palestinians. Israel restricts the Palestinians’ right to movement, controls the issuance of their identity papers, and takes almost no action when Jewish settlers commit acts of violence against Palestinian persons and property. In April 2021, the Israeli police disconnected the loudspeaker that relayed the Muezzin’s prayer to allow the President of the State, Reuven Rivlin, to give a speech without being interrupted. This was the match that set fire to an already highly combustible situation. There was also the fact that Palestinian families were evicted from their property in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. Under Israeli law, a Jew who has had to leave his property in East Jerusalem can have it returned to him, but the opposite is not true for Arab families. There were very difficult confrontations. The petition that I signed was signed by 180 people, the majority of them academics, and 10 recipients of the same Israel Prize. But that was enough for the Israeli Minister to declare me an “extreme anti-Zionist”. It’s comical when you know my positions since October 7, having tirelessly defended Israel’s right to exist.
To love Israel is to oppose the iniquitous regime of the Occupation and its excesses. To love Israel is to think about how this country can extricate itself from the infernal logic of war in which it is trapped. The Israeli government has done to me and others what authoritarian regimes do, that is, loyalty tests. I did not pass with honors with this far-right government. Which, in the end, I do not regret for myself, but deplore for the country. Very grave things are happening in Israel, and anyone who cares about the future of Israel should be disturbed and concerned.
To love Israel is to oppose the iniquitous regime of the Occupation. To love Israel is to think about how this country can extricate itself from the infernal logic of war in which it is trapped.
Last year, Yoav Kisch decided to cancel the awarding of the Israel Prize for Scientific Research to Eyal Waldman because he was protesting against the government’s judicial reform…
Eyal Waldman is a businessman. He has set up companies that employ people from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. He believes in the 18th-century idea of “doux commerce”, i.e. that trade fosters collaboration between human beings and, ultimately, to peace. He donated $360,000 to a hospital in Gaza in 2020. He has employed hundreds of Palestinians in his hi-tech industries. He had criticized Benjamin Netanyahu and had indeed played an important role in the demonstrations against the reform aimed at liquidating the independence of the judiciary. In Israeli terms, he poses a more direct threat to the government than I do… but he is not a scientist. He received the award for his contribution to the State.
Given the context, with the current government being driven by such McCarthyist impulses, were you tempted to refuse the award?
I was not the one who put forward my candidacy. It was a colleague. When he informed me of his gesture, I was grateful to him, but I didn’t think I would receive it. In fact, I didn’t think about it at all. The scientific committee chose me and the Minister asked them to reconsider their decision. They met a second time and were unable to elect anyone else. Even though I have become disenchanted with international courts, and no longer have the same reverence for them that I had at the time, and even though I criticized the ICC harshly after October 7, I will not budge from the intention that was behind my signature at the time. Israel exercises brutal military power over the Palestinians of the West Bank. To give in would be to legitimize this gross interference in scientific activity and this punitive attitude towards citizens.
Do you think that there is now a threshold in Israel beyond which critical thinking is no longer perceived as legitimate and becomes a threat to be neutralized?
Israel suffers from an autoimmune disease. Autoimmune diseases attack healthy cells as if they were dangerous. The body can no longer distinguish between healthy and diseased tissue. This is what is happening in Israel. The proof? Before October 7, Netanyahu was so busy seeing the demonstrators as enemies that he did not see where the real enemy was. He did not listen to the warnings about Hamas. This government acts as if those who fight to prevent Israel from becoming a pariah state were enemies. This is an autoimmune political disease. It is a hyper-defense that causes the body politic to suffocate from within. It is a propensity to see enemies everywhere, to demand loyalty all the time, to be mistaken about who are friends and enemies.
What do you think this reveals about the place that a critical intellectual can still occupy in the Israeli public space today?
I must say that I have felt internally exiled for a long time. Netanyahu’s power is corrupt. We see it a little more every day. And the power of the ultra-Orthodox in almost every aspect of Israeli life has become suffocating.
The moral foundation on which Jews rely to defend themselves is becoming increasingly fragile and shrinking. The situation is serious, but there is a beautiful people in Israel. One that is fighting to preserve democracy.
In my case and that of the prize, one of the members of the scientific committee changed her opinion and voted against me during the second meeting of the committee that the minister had demanded. The reason she invoked is nothing but stunning: she invoked an old Jewish law that designates Jews as “traitors” if they hand them over to non-Jews. This old religious law invokes the obligation to kill them. The last time it was invoked in public discourse was before Rabin’s murder. But at the time the stakes were enormous, since it was a question of returning territories. But in this case it is a scientific committee and it is a petition. Having taken the side of the Palestinians and asking The Hague to investigate possible war crimes makes me guilty of being a “mosser,” a traitor and therefore liable to be stoned. It takes your breath away. It poses a problem for my thinking: I have tried to make a distinction between Israel’s right to exist and Netanyahu’s dystopian and now criminal leadership. Defending Israel’s right to exist, on the one hand, and relentlessly condemning this thuggish government. But it’s going to get harder and harder. It’s going to take a lot of intellectual acrobatics. When a scientific prize is denied by a scientist in the name of an old religious law that advocates killing a traitor, it is a fatwa, but one that comes from the heart of the university, when Netanyahu wages an endless war and kills countless innocents, when suspicion of corruption hangs over so many aspects of the government, some of us will just no longer want to. There is something else: it is the shameful use that the Trump administration makes of antisemitism to justify its witch hunts. This association with Trumpism contaminates and undermines the fight against antisemitism. With friends like that, the Jews don’t need enemies anymore. It is a very serious and new crisis. The fight against antisemitism is now being led by an extreme right that has no principles and only recognizes force in history and instrumentalizes Jews and antisemitism. The moral foundation on which Jews rely to defend themselves is becoming increasingly fragile and shrinking. On the right as well as on the left, this foundation is collapsing.
The situation is grave, but there is a beautiful people in Israel. A people that is fighting to preserve democracy. I don’t think there is any other country where people have been on the streets for three years, even though they are waging harsh wars. That too is Israel. It is unique in the world. I salute these people in the streets.
The least that can be said is that you find yourself in a sadly ironic position: since October 7, you have spared no effort to defend the legitimacy of Israel and – while you have openly criticized part of the global left, scrutinized and analyzed its complacency towards Hamas, pointing out the similarities between anti-Zionism and antisemitism – here you are accused of your supposed “anti-Israel ideology”. How do you see your position, caught between those who criticize your Zionism and those who accuse you of being anti-Israeli?
You put it very well: I am caught between Scylla and Charybdis, between those who blindly support Israel and its policies of destruction and those who make Israel the primary principle of evil, ignoring all the places in the world where state crimes are committed. But deep down, isn’t that always the situation of the intellectual? The intellectual has values, of course, but she should not belong to an ideological camp. She wants to fight against lies, half-truths, ignorance and fanaticism, wherever they come from, even against her own side. But I must admit that our position, mine and that of people like me, is increasingly uncomfortable, since Israel is in the process of liquidating its democracy and the fight against antisemitism is being hijacked by disreputable people. The Occupation regime was anti-democratic, but the Israelis put up with it because it happened beyond the Green Line and because military and security considerations are closely intertwined in the Occupation. Now the liquidation of democracy is taking place inside the Green Line.
I fear that the Occupation and messianism have killed the moral and political culture of this country.
I fight for peace and brotherhood with the Palestinians, those who want to live in peace, for the maintenance of democracy in Israel, and at the same time I fight against antisemitism. Only ideology and the social division of political camps make these tasks incompatible. I try to hold both ends even if it is sometimes uncomfortable. The big question this raises is this: if Zionism is hijacked by an authoritarian and anti-democratic political project, what will be left of it? Not much, I think. The endless war that Israel has been waging since the creation of the state has blunted a certain human gentleness, its capacity for universal brotherhood, its ability to distinguish between force and legitimacy. Enemies are seen everywhere and the wrong friends are chosen. There used to be a policy that guided the army, but today it is a logic of war and warmongering that guides politics. But let’s not forget that all countries, without exception, would have long since slipped into illiberalism under similar circumstances. Every country in the world prioritizes its security. Israel is facing a crisis and is under various pressures that no country in the world knows. We must also remember that. To my great regret, Israel as a state is still not a country like any other. But the failings, excesses and crimes of some of its leaders are unfortunately similar to those of all human beings.
How do you envisage the possibility of having a balanced position like the one you are trying to adopt in the context of the ideological radicalization that we are experiencing today?
I don’t want to be balanced. I don’t like the middle ground. It was Max Weber who said that middle positions were no more true than extreme positions. I subscribe to this idea. I passionately defend the right of Jews to have a state and I protest against Netanyahu’s authoritarian excesses and the corruption of his government, against the destruction of lives in Gaza, I fear for the future of Israel, which is being undermined from within by too much division and dissent. I fear that the political and moral culture of this country has been destroyed by the Occupation and messianism. I believe that we must work to restore the Palestinians’ dignity, and I also abhor the antisemitism of my camp, the left. I don’t see any contradiction. Antisemitism, together with anti-black racism, is the most destructive scourge of humanity. It is true that when I lived in Israel, I felt no need to defend Zionism since, when you are in Israel, it amounts to holding an ultra-nationalist position. Outside Israel, it simply amounts to defending the right of Jews to self-determination, it amounts to rejecting the demonization of Zionism, it amounts to defending a tiny community. In Israel, I didn’t need to think about antisemitism, since Jews controlled their destiny. The place from which one speaks is crucial.
We can no longer deny the place occupied by religious messianists and their determination to make Israel something very different from the original Zionism.
You point out that, for you, depending on whether you are “in Israel” or “outside Israel”, the priorities and perceptions are not the same. The crisis facing the Jewish world is not perceived in the same way from Israel and from Europe?
I would say that being in Israel and living in France imply two fundamentally different positions. In Israel, as a Jew, I belong to the majority. In France, as a Jew, I belong to a tiny minority (500,000 out of a population of 68 million, or less than 1%). What changes, therefore, is that when you are in the majority, you have a responsibility towards minorities, Arabs and Palestinians. When I lived in Israel, I thought a lot about how the rights of Palestinians should be defended. But in France, I belong to a minority, I think a lot about hatred towards Jews, and as a member of a minority, I have a commitment to my people, especially when they are threatened. I think that any member of a minority understands what I mean by commitment to my people. These two opinions are not contradictory. It simply means that ideas are situated and that discourse depends on our position of power. Having power, which is the case in Israel, means having a responsibility towards the vulnerable and the dispossessed. Not having power means defending one’s own rights when they are threatened. On October 7, I was living in France and I felt an irresistible need to share in the mourning and anguish of my people. It was a change of place, not of opinion, if you like. As a Franco-Israeli, I go back and forth between these two positions.
What does this event change for you, personally, in your relationship to Israel?
I hope I don’t interpret the news based on my personal setbacks. For me, the break came when Rabin was assassinated in November 1995 and Netanyahu, who had led a campaign to demonize Rabin because of the Oslo process, was elected a few months later in 1996. That was when I realized that something very bad was brewing. That was the moment of the great rupture. I understood that the religious messianists had power and that they were leading Israel to disaster. I hoped I was wrong. But I believe that we can no longer deny the place they occupy and their determination to make Israel something very different from what original Zionism intended.
Having power, which is the case in Israel, means having a responsibility towards the weak in Israel. Not having power means defending one’s own rights when they are threatened.
You have always advocated critical thinking, rooted in Jewish history and universalism. What does the position of a critical Jewish intellectual in Israel look like to you today? Is it still tenable?
The traditional intellectual had two characteristics: she wanted to be above the fray, to have a position of superiority, not to be caught up in the glue of belongingness; and she practised what Foucault called parrhesia, she spoke truth to power. She put herself in danger with regard to power. That has changed. An intellectual can hardly be universalist anymore. She is now required to speak on behalf of a group, to represent a group, and her words only put her at risk within her group, not so much with regard to the authorities. For example, a woman born a Muslim who denounces Islamist excesses, like the comedian Sofia Aram, has her group as her main enemy, not the French Republic. An anti-Zionist Jew who criticizes the Israeli government’s policy will be considered an “anti-Zionist” and will not be part of the official Jewish community. It is the communities, which are sometimes oppressed, that exercise a strong power of censorship over the words of intellectuals. The Jewish community often does the same thing because there is a strong tension between loyalty and independence. When you feel weak and under attack, loyalty becomes central. I understand that.
But the discourse that has epistemic and moral authority is one that does not get caught up in the quasi-religious desire to defend the good cause or one’s group at all costs, but is capable of integrating into its thinking facts that do not necessarily please its own community, which tries to reflect on the complexity and contradictions of reality. This is the universalist position, and it is necessarily complex because it takes into account divergent points of view. The universalist position is not one that floats above the clouds. On the contrary, it tries to understand particular points of view and go beyond them. Israel cannot be understood if it is viewed solely through the prism of colonialism. Zionism has both colonial and anticolonial elements. Israel is today under the control of a government that acts against democratic institutions, but it also reacts to the violence of the opposing camp, that of the Muslim Brotherhood, that of the Islamist millenarists. This is the ambiguity and the difficulty of the ‘comprehensive’ method advocated by Max Weber: it is about understanding what one dislikes without justifying it. It is also about grasping reality by restoring its contradictory attributes. The position of the intellectual requires managing the tension between loyalty and truth all the time. I love Israel, but I am horrified by its authoritarian excesses and what seems to be a profound corruption of the state apparatus (I am thinking of Qatargate, among others). One can and must hold both positions by grasping their moral coherence and continuity.
