In this unprecedented time of ordeal, K. will not be publishing an issue this week. Given the events unfolding in Israel and the emotions they stir within us it does not seem possible to continue as usual. K. typically examines the fate of European Jews so that the issue of the diaspora’s relationship with the State of Israel is naturally one of its acute themes. This focus is evidenced by recent contributions published, notably those aimed at deconstructing the improper use of the term “apartheid” in the current criticism of Israeli policy. However, it is not insignificant to note its appearance in the very discourse of Hamas to justify their massacre of Jews.
For now, it’s the news that requires our attention. The Hamas attack on Israel has shaken the Jewish world and one can anticipate that it will have a lasting impact. As for how exactly no one can say at this moment when shock and pain dominate.
One thing at least appears clear, not because it is a “revelation,” but simply because it exposes what should have been common knowledge long ago.
It would take a great deal of bad faith, blindness and/or anti-Jewish conviction to refuse to admit that Hamas is not a governing party nor even a political movement but a criminal organization whose sole purpose is to spread terror and death. Since international opinion is always supplied with such bias this is the image this group has presented since they took power in Gaza in 2007—one of the heroic representatives of the “latest” version of decolonization fighters combining extreme poverty, worn-out knives, and assault rifles. This status is enough to place them on the side of good which sometimes goes astray but always benefits from the sanctification of the oppressed. A pitiful representation of the floundering left that current events expose to the ignominy it deserves. Hamas is nothing but a fundamentalist, fascist, murderous group that makes crimes against civilians its mantra and a point of pride. A group that for long hours had a free hand in southern Israel where, seized by a passion for extermination, they massacred as many Jews as they could.
We can certainly expect that the anti-Zionists of yesterday, today, and tomorrow will not be discouraged or disillusioned by so little. From the very first hours of the attack, there was already talk of that famous “asymmetry” that is used as a matter of course to show who the real victim is, however bloodthirsty and enraged Hamas may be. The fact that they have all the traits of the dominated should be enough to accredit them without having to see what they really want or especially what they are capable of doing when they have the force of arms at their disposal. They indeed used this said force during those endless hours of slaughter targeting civilians, men, children, women, and the elderly alike. And, as we write, that’s the power they still wield. So much so that the inverted narrative of the brave and frail David fighting a Jewish Goliath, however well twisted it may be in people’s minds, is severely undermined by the unbearable images that follow one another—those of civilians executed at point-blank range and whose bodies lie in the streets, those of bloodied young women dragged by their hair and displayed as trophies in Gaza, and others still. But it took more than that to make the extreme left’s fetish antiphon give way—the French NPA [Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste] eager to “speak well,” seized the opportunity to express its “support for the Palestinians and the means of struggle they have chosen to resist.” Within a few hours the major European television networks changed the focus of their coverage to “Israel’s war on Gaza.”
Is this the slope’s direction in the days or weeks to come? That’s what we fear. It is almost certain that the longer Israel’s response to the Hamas attack continues the more world opinion will forget the atrocities committed or even excuse them by invoking the absurd image of a fighter armed only with chains, or that of the young David defying the giant. Poor David. It is likely that the insult inflicted on the Jewish people by comparing their murderers to their greatest king from whose lineage the Messiah is supposed to be born will trouble no one. Meanwhile, we at the K. editorial office like the entire Jewish world count our sleepless nights filled with anxiety for loved ones or loved ones of loved ones living in Israel and fear for young men and women who will have to go to war again and a deep sense of attachment to this state in which we do not live but which we hold dear above all else.
The editorial team
