As Israel’s operation to decapitate the Tehran regime and target its nuclear program continues, triggering a response across the entire territory of the Jewish state, Bruno Karsenti and Danny Trom question the political significance of this major turning point in the Middle East conflict. Compared to the distortion of Zionism represented by the current conduct of the war in Gaza, the war against Iran takes on a whole new meaning, both for Israelis and for the entire Jewish world.
The current war with Iran reminds us of the existential threat under which Israel continues to live. For Israelis, awareness of this threat has obviously never faded, regularly rekindled by attacks from various armed groups whose power matrix is Iran, the torchbearer of the desire to destroy the Jewish state, which largely dominates opinion in the countries of the region. For Jews in the diaspora, this threat has been felt every day since October 7, through the unbridled demonstrations of anti-Zionism, which has made this desire for destruction its own under the guise of fighting colonialism. The slogan “Free Palestine,” when uttered with the rage to destroy the Jewish state, has the same resonance as the official Iranian discourse, which is accompanied by actions to acquire the weapons needed to achieve its ends. For several decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has asserted itself as the global center of international antisemitism, a place where a synthesis of antizionism and Holocaust denial is developed and disseminated, arguing that the “Zionist entity” is illegitimate because it is based on the ‘myth’ of the Shoah, and tirelessly concludes that destroying it will truly and beneficially accomplish what was until then only a fiction of the “West.”
Thus, the entire Jewish world is uniting in this new moment of trial. It is drawing closer together during these nights of anguish, some in shelters, others glued to the news. In each case, however, the conviction remains that Jewish survival comes at this price, since the very existence of Israel is at stake due to the real capabilities of its enemy. In each case, the link with October 7, which had violently reactivated this sense of existential threat and the need to survive, is obvious.
However, we must face the fact that this obvious truth is not shared by everyone. It is not only confronted by its declared opponents, the militant anti-Zionists. It is obscured in the general opinion by the conduct of the war in Gaza and Israeli policy. By transforming a justified and necessary response to the aggression of October 7 into a murderous war, terrible for the Palestinian civilian population and driven by what is expressed in the speeches of its leaders as a desire for conquest, the Israeli government has placed itself in contradiction with historical Zionism, which is focused on Jewish survival.
As a result, Jews are once again alone. Admittedly, on the international political scene, the attack on Iran, whether condemned or approved in terms of its timing, is understood in terms of its aim. But this aim is clouded in the common perception that it is merely a policy of power, in the wake of the one that took control in the war in Gaza. In truth, this is not the case, and here is an opportunity for clarification. Israel is currently experiencing a contradiction: having deviated from its principle in the war in Gaza for months, it cannot at the same time do anything other than act in accordance with what it is, that is, to continue the Zionist project of building a modern-day refuge for Jews in the form of a democratic state based on the rule of law. The persistence of this principle is currently expressed by attacking Iran to neutralize the growing threat and possibility of the destruction of the Jewish state. While in the eyes of the world these two contradictory tendencies only serve to create confusion—from which anti-Zionism obviously derives all possible benefit—in the eyes of the Jews, a point of clarity has now been reached. This is where we must start from. A distinction must be made between right and wrong, in words and in deeds. And from the unjust to the just, we can even hope that the Israeli offensive, if it leads to the collapse or at least the lasting weakening of those who ordered the October 7 massacre, will reinforce a more peaceful, finally open and constructive Israeli approach to the Palestinian question. May the war against Iran, with its clear and justified goals, serve as a new direction for ending the war in Gaza. Then, the modern Jewish viewpoint that Zionism embodies will be able to reassert itself clearly and dispel the suspicion of illegitimacy that the combined efforts of anti-Zionism and the Israeli extreme right have cast on world opinion.
Bruno Karsenti & Danny Trom
