The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not only fractured the Middle East: it has reopened a rift at the heart of Europe. Why has this distant war become the “question” that is tearing the continent apart? What does it reveal about our idea of justice, our memory, and our confidence in emancipation? By tracing the genealogy of the major European “questions” – social, national, feminist – Julia Christ invites us to radically shift our perspective: what if today’s uncertainty is not just about political positions, but about the very meaning of Europe itself?
The war seems to be over, the hostages who were still alive have returned home, and food aid is now flowing into Gaza at a faster rate; and yet, there is already a vague sense that the episode is far from over. Investigations remain to be conducted, responsibilities to be firmly established, and courts to be found that can judge both the crimes of Hamas against Israel (but undoubtedly also against the people of Gaza) and those of the Israeli government in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Above all, this remains unresolved as we cannot forget the passion that October 7, and then the war in Gaza, unleashed in Europe.
The European divide
For two years now, the Israel/Gaza issue, or more broadly the Israel/Palestine issue, has been haunting Europe: the Union has split between governments that have declared the existence of a Palestinian state and those that want to know the intentions of such a state before recognizing it; and the divide even runs through the famous Franco-German relationship itself. European public opinion has made adherence to the pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli camp a barrier to entry into any debate on any subject. Whereas previously one might have wondered whether a discussion partner was left-wing or right-wing, today one openly asks whether they are prepared to neglect the suffering of the Jewish people or that of the Palestinian people—and woe betide anyone who does not wish to turn away from either suffering, as they will be questioned until it is clear which camp they really belong to.
Friendships have been broken over this issue, professional collaborations have fallen apart. Hatred, once the preserve of extremists, has become an almost normal moral and political emotion. Jewish communities in Europe have withdrawn into themselves in the face of general indifference to their plight under the weight of triumphant antisemitism disguised as good conscience. On the other side, national majorities increasingly avoid any contact with their Jewish fellow citizens, claiming that it is no longer possible to talk to them, that they have all become narrow-minded particularists, and that, in any case, the accusation of antisemitism is so widely used that one is no longer safe with Jews, who are ready to take you to court at any moment for a misplaced smile.
Whereas previously one might have wondered whether a discussion partner was left-wing or right-wing, today one openly asks whether they are prepared to neglect the suffering of the Jewish people or that of the Palestinian people—and woe betide anyone who does not wish to turn away from either suffering.
None of this will disappear even if a lasting peace is achieved. We can certainly pretend that it never happened, that the explosion of antisemitism was only a desperate and clumsy reaction to the situation of the Palestinian population under bombardment, a reaction that was never, in truth, aimed at the Jewish community; we can try to forget the relish with which the words “genocidal,” “child killers,” and “Nazis” were attached to the Jewish name; we can deny having seen the immense disappointment of the most radical camp of the Palestinian cause when the ceasefire was approaching; we can declare that the outbreaks of violence in Bern, for example, the conferences on the theme “we do not regret October 7” in French universities after the guns fell silent, as well as the flood of books and articles portraying Israel as the paradigm of everything that is wrong in the world, are not symptomatic, and sweep under the rug the frustration expressed in them, not about a peace whose contours, as outlined by President Trump, already indicate that it will be far from perfect for the Palestinian people, but about the discomfort that we will probably encounter again when people shout “Death to the Jews” in the streets .“ In short, we may not want to see that the Israel-Palestine issue is not a problem of war and peace awaiting a solution, but that it is truly the European question of our time.
Majority and minority: what is a European question?
In order to see more clearly what this is about, we must first remember that European questions are rare. There are two kinds: those that concern the interior and those that concern the exterior of Europe. As for the former, only a few are known to date: the social question and the agrarian question in the 19th century, the national question or the question of nationalities in the 19th and 20th centuries, the women’s question and the Jewish question, which have been ongoing since the French Revolution. What is remarkable about this list is the common issue at stake in all these “questions.” Whenever a subject acquires the dignity of a “question,” it touches on what constitutes the very heart of the post-revolutionary European political project, namely emancipation. Whether it be the labor movement in Western Europe, the peasant movement in Southern and Eastern Europe, the demand for self-determination by peoples at the time of the collapse of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, or the demand by women and Jews in Europe that the latter live up to its promise of emancipation for all – in each case, we are faced with minorities demanding full integration into fundamental rights, either in terms of the internal life of national societies that have been co-constructed since the French Revolution, or in terms of the life between peoples who are determined to participate in this common project whose watchword is emancipation. In this respect, a “question” for Europe therefore arises as soon as the project of emancipation is concerned in societies where there are minorities and a majority.
The concept of minority, in the questions that Europe asks itself, does not refer to numbers but to the attitude of the majority towards them, which thinks it knows what society is made up of and, consequently, what is absolutely right for it.
The concept of minority obviously has a very specific meaning here: neither women in general nor peasants and workers in the 19th century, for example, constituted numerical minorities within European national societies. The same cannot be said of minority nationalities within declining empires—until such time as they acquire states, which makes them numerically dominant in their new states—or of Jews until 1948, when the founding of the State of Israel created a place where Jews also enjoy this kind of numerical majority, which, however, does not change anything about the minority status, including numerically, of Jews in the diaspora in their respective nations. The concept of minority, in the questions that Europe asks itself, does not therefore refer to numbers. It may be that the minority that questions the European emancipation project with a view to its completeness — since it knows it is excluded from it — may be a numerical minority, but numbers are not what make these groups minorities. What makes them minorities is something else entirely, namely the attitude of the majority towards them. The majority here may be numerically smaller than the minorities, as was the case with the bourgeoisie in relation to the labor and peasant movements. What matters is that it represents the group that does not hold power – although this is often the case – but which is convinced that it holds the truth about the life of society as a whole. The majority is the social group that thinks it knows what society is made of and, consequently, what is absolutely right for it. For the social fabric that the majority claims to be the only one to truly understand is made up not only of material needs and infrastructure—technocratic knowledge would be more than enough to devise appropriate policies if that were the case — but essentially of expectations of justice and therefore of ideals and aspirations. The majority is the group that believes it has understood these fully and is therefore the only one capable of meeting these expectations of justice and correctly formulating society’s emancipatory aims. What it denies minorities, or more precisely all groups it considers to be minorities, is the ability to rise to this level of comprehensive and global vision of social life oriented towards justice and the common good. And it is because of this presumed inability that it keeps them in a state of minority from a legal, political, and social point of view; in other words, it delays their full and complete emancipation.
There are many reasons given for this doubt about the epistemic and cognitive abilities of minorities: in the case of women, their “nature” has often been cited as preventing them from accessing cold, neutral reason, and therefore an objective view of the whole; peasants and workers have been criticized for their cultural backwardness; as for national groups, including Jews, they have always been accused of having particular interests stemming from their exclusive attachment to their group, preventing them from truly considering society as a whole. Nature, backwardness, and particularism form, so to speak, the mental triptych available to the majority to reject demands for emancipation.
A “question” thus begins to haunt Europe when the majority, as thus defined, questions its own prejudices toward minorities and their capacity to conceive of the whole social world.. This questioning is generally not voluntary. The majority does not wake up one fine morning thinking it might be wrong. It is pushed toward this ‘question’ by the emancipation movements of said minorities—that is, by their demands to be considered as groups capable of forming individuals able to adopt the perspective of the totality and, in parallel, by their attempts to prove this capacity for full agency.In this respect, European minorities have always followed the Kantian path to emancipation: they understand that the majority makes them “stupid” and deliberately keeps them in a state of intellectual inferiority; and they take responsibility for their situation by attempting to demonstrate that they are fully capable not only of thinking for themselves, but also of encompassing all of society’s issues in their thinking—and thus of challenging the privilege of knowledge that the majority attributes to itself. And it is this second step that is essential if a minority emancipation movement is to succeed in transforming its demands into a “question” for the entire society. For it is only when the movement’s ability to formulate a complete understanding of society that challenges the majority’s understanding becomes clear to everyone that the moral and epistemological legitimacy of the majority’s authority begins to crumble. And it is only when this process is underway that the majority begins to doubt a key element of its position as the “knowing” party, namely its good conscience in acting just in all circumstances.
Furthermore, before 1945, there was a second type of issue that could affect Europe. These were foreign policy issues, such as the Eastern question n the 19th and early 20th centuries or the colonial question at the same time. These “questions” were debated in the public opinion of European nation states, where the aim was to clarify the opportunities for influence provided by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the first case, and the opportunity for conquest and colonization in the second. In this domain, the term ‘question’ covers issues of foreign policy concerned with expanding the sphere of influence of states. I If societies become excited on these occasions, it is not because these questions challenge their own capacity to embody an ideal of justice, and thus to achieve the emancipation of all, but rather because of their interests as state powers. In this sense, these two types of questions that Europe may ask itself are diametrically opposed. They do not communicate with each other, except in ideological discourse, which considers any imperial or colonial expansion to be highly moral. The first type of question concerns the deepening of justice that modern societies are capable of, while the second has nothing to do with these considerations and is concerned with the strategic interests of states.
Domestic policy – foreign policy
Given this background of what can really constitute a “question” for Europe, how can the Israeli-Palestinian conflict claim this status? For someone like the US President, for example, it is clear that there is a Middle East question that is in the strategic interests of the United States, regardless of questions of justice. For the French government, it is also a crucial strategic issue, given the importance France attaches to its “Eastern policy” inherited from General de Gaulle and his desire to become the privileged interlocutor of Arab countries after the Algerian War, not to mention France’s particular interests in Lebanon. So much so that, for the French government, the war in Gaza undoubtedly overlapped with this meaning of the term “question”, and it is a safe bet that the rift in the Franco-German partnership stems from the fact that, for Germany, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a matter of domestic policy for Europe, while for President Macron, it is a matter of French foreign policy.
What this sequence of events has revealed is that it is now impossible in Europe to consider any political issue, whether external or domestic, other than in terms of the fulfillment of justice.
But let’s leave geopolitical issues aside. They concern us only insofar as they reveal the European state of mind. And in this area, a harsh light has been shed on one fact: there was unanimous condemnation of President Trump’s unapologetic attitude toward dealmaking, which in our part of the world provokes nothing but disgust. What this sequence of events has revealed is that it is now impossible in Europe to consider any political issue, whether external or domestic, other than in terms of the fulfillment of justice. The French president is well aware of this, since he felt compelled to dress up a very traditional French policy on the Middle East in grand moral posturing about the rights of peoples. European public opinion no longer discusses the opportunities for influence of their states—the objective decline of Europe as a global political power makes this as necessary as the post-1945 European construction as an entity based on international law respecting minorities and small states. The conflict between Israel and Palestine has therefore not become the “question” for a large part of European public opinion because the economic or strategic destiny of European states is at stake. As with Ukraine, public opinion stubbornly refuses to consider the very existence of these issues and only agrees to assess the situations brought to its attention from a moral point of view. We must take this assessment of reality by public opinion at face value: in Europe, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and even more so the war in Gaza, is primarily a question of justice. European governments may disguise strategic interests under moral discourse, but European societies genuinely cannot hear strategic considerations. In this respect, and we can only welcome this, today’s European societies are truly post-1945 societies, where the argument of interest or power has become unacceptable in public debate when it contradicts law and justice.
But if it is not strategic or economic interests that are driving Europe, what is at stake in this conflict that makes it the question of our time? Obviously, the easiest answer here is to say that it is the question of Europe, precisely because this conflict touches most closely on the self-understanding of a Europe which, after the Holocaust, was built as an entity where considerations of justice always take precedence over considerations of traditional power politics—in short, where everything has become domestic politics—and which, from this moral consciousness, is horrified by the destruction of Gaza. This response, in its simplicity, obviously does not stand up to reality: Europe remained silent when confronted with images from Grozny or Raqqa, and generally leads a rather quiet life regardless of what the Chinese inflict on the Uyghurs, Saudi Arabia on Yemen, or the Taliban on Afghan women. The violations of international law and human justice, including those of extreme gravity, that we witness on a daily basis are not a “question” for Europe.
The response we regularly hear to this obvious fact is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and especially the devastating war in Gaza, is of great concern to Europe, since the violence is being perpetrated by the country that was founded after the Holocaust to provide a permanent refuge for the victims of Nazi genocide. And since, according to the same argument, the Holocaust is the foundation of the legal and moral order that Europe now embodies, it is unacceptable for Europe that those whose almost complete destruction forced Europe to limit itself politically—that is, to renounce strategic and power logic as a legitimate motive for action by its states—should not limit themselves. The criticism here is that Israel betrays the memory of the Holocaust when it should be, together with Europe, the country that most fully realizes the political consequences of the crime.
In Europe’s eyes, Israel is not a temporary solution to its failure, but a sign of a flaw that irreparably undermines Europe’s confidence in its own ability to be truly just.
This is the backdrop to all the verbal excesses that equate Israel with Nazi Germany or repeat the word “genocide” like a mantra, as well as pictorial representations showing the Gaza Strip transformed into an extermination camp or Anne Frank wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh. What is expressed here is an inability to bear the fact that Israel, the country of the victims, has not drawn the same conclusions from the Holocaust as Europe, the land of the perpetrators. It also expresses a reproach directed at Jews in the diaspora who, by supporting Israel, are applying double standards in their assessment of what a post-Holocaust policy should be.
But what is this post-Holocaust policy of Europe, not in general, but in relation to Israel? In other words, what does post-Holocaust policy mean when we move away from generalities, where it is exhausted in concepts such as “human rights,” “international law,” or the mysterious “never again”? It is clear that when the State of Israel was created, preceded by the UN vote on the partition plan for Palestine, there was a consensus on what “post-Holocaust policy” meant: the recognition that no conception of politics, including the one that believed itself to be the most universalist, enlightened, and humanist of all time—modern European politics based precisely on human and civil rights—could guarantee the security of the Jewish people. In this regard, the criminal future of German cultural humanism was certainly just as cruel to face as the complicity of France, the country of human rights, the Netherlands, the mother of the idea of tolerance, or even the indifference of Switzerland, apparently the most perfect democracy. European support for the creation of the State of Israel is not a recognition of a temporary failure: given the thousand-year history of persecution of Jews in Europe, this support demonstrates that Europe has acknowledged that it believes it will never be able to stop persecuting this minority within its borders. In Europe’s eyes, Israel is not a temporary solution to its failure, but a sign of a flaw that irreparably undermines Europe’s confidence in its own ability to be truly just. The more awareness of this flaw grows, the more post-1945 Europe becomes post-Holocaust Europe. Similarly, for Jews after the Holocaust, the creation of the State of Israel meant exactly the same thing: the creation of a safe haven at all times, and therefore also the recognition that they no longer blindly trust Europe and its ability to be just.
Post-Holocaust policy: enduring the flaw
Here we can see that post-Holocaust policy towards Israel in no way meant the realization of “international law” or “human rights.” Nor did it refer to the moral capacity of European peoples to always think of the “persecution of the Jewish people” when they pronounce or hear “never again.” On the contrary, what is expressed in this aspect of post-Holocaust policy is that even if Europe commits to drawing another conclusion from the Holocaust, namely the legal self-limitation of what politics and sovereignty mean, and even if it implements a policy of remembrance aimed at giving concrete historical content to the “never again” a, it is still possible that Europe will not succeed in not persecuting Jews.
Europe’s post-Holocaust policy therefore meant two things: on the one hand, the protection of Jews in Europe and by Israel—which implies support for Jewish political sovereignty—and, on the other hand, the self-limitation of modern politics by law, including international law. The second element certainly serves to guarantee the first, but the first does not dissolve into the second and cannot dissolve into it as long as Europe recognizes that it can no longer be certain of guaranteeing it itself. This non-coincidence between the two aspects of post-Holocaust policy explains why, for Germany, Israel’s security is a matter of “raison d’état”. For Germans, it seems obvious that the question of Israel is in fact a question of European domestic policy, in the sense that it is up to Europe’s post-Holocaust policy to distinguish between submission to the law of political sovereignty in Europe and the creation of a safe space for the Jews of this world. Distinguishing does not mean not judging Israel by the standards of the law, but it does mean not erasing the Jewish name from post-1945 politics. In other words, it means remembering that this policy has two objectives: to limit itself in accordance with the law and to ensure that the Holocaust cannot be repeated, which, given Europe’s recognition of its inability to guarantee that this will not happen again, means ensuring that Israel is safe.
If the Israel-Palestine question has therefore become Europe’s question today, it is because something in this conflict reveals a tension within Europe regarding its understanding of its own emancipation project.
Given that the Israel-Palestine issue can no longer be a matter of foreign policy in Europe, and given that it is nevertheless the question of our time, we must conclude that it is therefore a matter of domestic policy for Europe. It is one of those questions that touch on the project of emancipation of European societies. This project of emancipation, which the crime committed could have rendered null and void, was maintained after the Holocaust, adjusted to the acts committed: submission to the law on the one hand, support for the construction of a shelter for the Jewish people on the other. If the Israel-Palestine question has therefore become Europe’s question today, it is because something in this conflict reveals a tension within Europe regarding its understanding of its own emancipation project. This tension is often not named as such, but manifests itself in public debate in an impoverished way, in the form of a conflict between the law, in this case international law condemning Israel’s actions in this war, and support for Israel. However, this is a superficial way of understanding what is at stake: through this internal conflict, Europe is in fact debating whether its post-revolutionary and post- Holocaust emancipation project can be satisfied with the law and the deepening of rights in order to continue, or whether it must continue to doubt its ability to protect Jews while advancing on the path of self-limitation through the law. For it is indeed this difficult path that Europe has taken since 1945: on the one hand, it has constantly created new rights—social rights, women’s rights, sexual minority rights, minority rights, environmental rights—and on the other, it has strived to remember that it is not certain that, despite this pursuit of emancipation, it will be able to protect its Jews. And Israel, for Europe, is the name of this flaw.
Clearly, this is why the eruption of conflicts in European public opinion did not wait for the start of the Israeli war against Gaza. It was on October 7th itself that the question of support for Israel arose, and it was on October 7th itself that a section of enlightened public opinion rejected the idea that such support was part of a European policy of justice. October 7th posed a question to Europe that, in truth, it had not asked itself for a long time: the question of whether it still wants a refuge for Jews, which inevitably implies the question of whether it still doubts itself. And a substantial part of Europe, namely its progressive part, answers this question in the negative. It is not that it openly says no to a refuge state for Jews—that ‘no’ is expressed indirectly through the struggle for the liberation of Palestine—but by conditioning its support for the existence of this state on its submission to the legal dimension alone of the European conception of politics, it openly rejects the necessity of continuing to doubt itself. In short, what October 7th brought to the surface is that a part of Europe now has a clear conscience, is confident that it possesses all the resources to be absolutely just, and considers that doubting itself regarding its capacity to protect Jews makes it unfaithful to its project of being the bearer and bulwark of human rights and international law for all. This is why the end of the war will change nothing here.
For here, it is a debate about the meaning of Europe’s emancipation project. On the one hand, we have the majority (which does not need to be the largest number) believing that it holds the knowledge of the ideals of justice in our societies, invoking international and humanitarian law, whose obligations apply or should apply to all. On the other hand, there are those, certainly a minority, who try to argue that the project of European emancipation cannot be satisfied with the abstraction of rights, but must continue to consider the particular situation of the Jewish minority, which is never safe from persecution. They assert that the existence and security of Israel are an existential issue for Europe if the continent wants to remain a post-Holocaust construct, that is, to conceive of its politics as a deepening of justice, which is never entirely certain to be infallible.
The temptation to cover up the flaw with the law
What is deemed unbearable in this minority discourse is the alleged exceptionalism claimed for a minority group, namely the Jews. In any case, what is claimed to be unacceptable, given the multitude of victims of European violence, and here primarily the formerly colonized peoples, is that the Jewish people should have a privilege among the victims. In the name of symmetrizing the experiences of European criminal policies, what is perceived as a priority given to Jews is then rejected.And this is done all the more easily because the creation of the State of Israel on the land of Palestine, thus on non-European land, is considered to have been an effect of the Holocaust, thus of a European crime, but in its realization to reiterate the old colonial logic of Europe consisting in exporting its problems with no regard whatsoever for local populations. . In short, it is considered that Europe responded to its crime with another crime that is just as constitutive of European politics as the destruction of the Jewish people and which, as such, must also tinge its emancipation project with doubt. And just as post-Holocaust doubt compels Europe to want Israel as a potential refuge in the event of its own uncontrolled and uncontrollable failure, postcolonial doubt compels Europe to ask itself with each act of foreign policy whether it does not fall within the register of colonization—notably epistemic, economic, cultural, or legal colonization that persists after the withdrawal of European powers from formerly colonized territories. What is reproached to Europe from this perspective, thus to oneself, is that as long as support for Israel is maintained precisely in the name of self-doubt at home, Europe has not truly taken account of the other imperative that must govern European foreign policy, which is anticolonial.
It is clear that Europe’s post-Holocaust and postcolonial policies are in conflict here, if postcolonial policy means that Europe will never again export its needs and problems to the detriment of the peoples to whom it exports them. And the privilege suspected of being granted to Jews concerns the fact that Europe attaches more importance to its doubts about its ability to guarantee the safety of Jews within its borders than to its doubts about its ability to act without harming non-European peoples.
To overcome the conflict between the two demands placed on post-1945 European politics, there is thus a rush into the abstraction of law, particularly international law, which is considered to be the great achievement capable of preserving politics from becoming criminal.
The contradiction between these two demands placed on European politics—protecting Jews and absolutely respecting the autonomy of all peoples and nations on this globe—finds its solution, in the majority discourse, in the appeal to law. For the lowest common denominator of both crimes is an infringement of rights. To overcome the conflict between the two demands placed on post-1945 European politics, there is thus a rush into the abstraction of law, particularly international law, which is considered to be the great achievement capable of preserving politics from becoming criminal, whether internally or externally. In fact, this conception of emancipation policy following the end of the Second World War, however continuist it may seem in its emphasis on rights and their deepening, also operates with a figure of rupture: international law is conceived as a radically new form of law, constraining states from the outside and thus ensuring that the sovereign people cannot subvert the law by enacting unjust laws or act externally in the interests of power and self-interest.
It is clear that a harmonization of post-Holocaust politics and postcolonial politics is thus indeed possible, and that the ‘necessity of Israel’ component of post-Holocaust politics can be blithely eliminated, once one considers having reached a level of political self-limitation sufficiently assured to render the persecution of Jews impossible; and this is thought to have been achieved through the invention of this unprecedented law. In short, the law that was damaged by crime is thought to have been repaired, not through the punishment of crime, which is the mode of repair for injured law in the case of crimes committed by individuals, but—insofar as, for both the Holocaust and colonization, it was law itself that became criminal—through its replacement by a better law. And this is what the majority says, the one that now opposes support for Israel’s existence being part of post-1945 politics: that all emancipation politics in Europe must rely exclusively on this new legal order, considered capable of ensuring Europe’s justice both internally and externally.
What emancipation means
The struggle over what emancipation means therefore has nothing to do with the necessary abolition of privileges. For the “necessity of Israel” aspect of post-Holocaust policy does not refer to granting privileges to Jews or considering them to be more important victims than those of colonization. It simply states that a crime was committed within the European social and political body and recognizes that Europe committed it despite the law that had already limited its domestic policy. It acknowledges that the popular sovereign can trample on the rights of individuals and minorities within it, including those whose integration had been legally sanctioned; and that these minorities therefore need a place where they can flee if this ever happens again. And since the Jewish minority was the only one (along with women and sexual minorities, in fact) that did not have one in 1945, the creation of this place was necessary in view of the flaw in modern politics that could not be ignored at that time. Just as the creation of a right of asylum, definitively established in the Geneva Convention in 1951, was necessary in view of the danger that individuals potentially faced.
Certainly, both Israel and Hamas are reprehensible from the point of view of international law. But what is the meaning of the enthusiasm for this particularly ineffective instrument, the excessive moralization of European discourse that we have been witnessing since October 7, the oozing superiority of good conscience in which the majority has been cloaking itself for two years when invoking international law?
What is unbearable about the majority discourse today is not the “privilege” that Jews are said to claim, but the flaw at the very heart of post-Shoah European policy, which the mere existence of the State of Israel highlights. This flaw was exposed on October 7, when the fragility of the shelter and the barbarity of the attackers brought the memory of the Holocaust to everyone’s mind. It must be realized that in the refusal to see the abominations committed by Hamas, in the immediate accusation of Israel as a colonial and potentially genocidal state, in the glorification of the justified resistance that Hamas supposedly embodies, it was not so much a question of demonizing Israel as of asserting that European solidarity, which implies the very idea of a refuge for Jews, had given way to an unconditional defense of international law. And a major indication that this was indeed the case is the stubborn refusal of those who espouse this discourse to take an interest in the history of the Israel-Palestine situation, which would inevitably have exposed not only the complexity of the conflict itself, but also the European rationale for wanting this State. This reason cannot be summed up by the famous “guilt” that Europe is said to have exported; it consists of Europe’s mistrust of its own ability to truly guarantee its own justice. This is the abyss that the majority can no longer bear to face and which it covers up with its discourse on international law, which it has just discovered as an absolute guarantee against crime. Certainly, both Israel and Hamas are reprehensible from the point of view of international law. But the enthusiasm for this instrument, which is particularly ineffective in reality, the excessive moralizing of European discourse since October 7, the oozing superiority of good conscience in which the majority has been cloaking itself for two years by invoking international law to condemn Israel, betrays one thing above all: that for them, the era of failure is over, that Europe has found the right post-1945 policy, and that this policy consists precisely in international law. And Europe, having found this right policy, is now certain that it will never again persecute Jews—hence the complete denial of anti-Semitism in Europe. Consequently, no shelter elsewhere is necessary for the Jewish minority. When it is persecuted within our societies, it is accompanied only by the whisper that it is not really being persecuted.
The emancipation project after 1945 had radically changed in that it now knew itself to be fallible. It was this fallibility that post-Holocaust politics acknowledged, and not simply a rupture in civilization that could be identified by adopting, this time around, the right moral and legal norms. For the flaw that was discovered lies in the possibility that peoples may not abide by their own norms, that they may seek something other than justice. And no new legal order could guard against this. Europe’s post-Holocaust emancipation project was unprecedented in that it did not give up on emancipation, while knowing that Europe could never again be certain of its justice.
The Jewish question of the 21st century
The ‘question’ that preoccupies Europe today is whether the inscription of this flaw in knowledge about ourselves undermines the emancipation project. Reactionaries of all stripes affirm that yes, it is indeed the consciousness of its own fallibility that has made Europe weak, that it is time to rediscover pride in the accomplishments of Western civilization and to pursue the post-revolutionary project from its sound foundations. Progressives who believe that international law constitutes the right and only response to the crimes of the Holocaust and colonization also think that yes, because, for them, the problem with currently existing international law is not its potential fallibility, but that it is not enforced. Both camps actually believe that the flaw no longer has any place in European consciousness nor, a fortiori, in commanding its politics. For the former, it is enough to return to the glorious history of European accomplishments, even if it means turning a blind eye to what is euphemistically called its ‘dark episodes.’ For the latter, one must under no circumstances turn a blind eye to Europe’s crimes, but nevertheless rejoice that a normative order has been created that will guarantee against these crimes in the future. Nothing of the Europe that acknowledged its criminal potential and its inability to guarantee never again doing ‘that’ remains in this conception of emancipation. And consequently the necessity of Israel loses all its self-evidence.
The Israel-Palestine question is indeed the expression of an insoluble European contradiction. Europe must actively recognize the autonomy of all peoples of this earth, and this imperative puts it at odds with the creation of a Jewish state on the historic land of the Jewish people. To recognize this contradiction is to settle into a political life conscious of the flaw that founds modern post-1945 politics, but it is also the only way to give genuine meaning to the idea of the ‘search for justice’.
If, therefore, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become Europe’s ‘question,’ it is because Europe is asking itself whether its emancipation project can bear as its horizon the possibility of not succeeding. Whether failure, missing the mark, potential shipwreck can coexist with the constant attempt to respond to the demands for justice that are formulated in our societies—in other words, with the tireless search for justice inherent in Europe’s emancipation project. And we seem to have reached the point where one part of our societies asserts that it is too hard to work under these conditions, while another part, the Jews and those who remain convinced that Israel is a matter of domestic policy for Europe, considers that there is no worthwhile search for justice except one that acknowledges all the dangers that the word ‘search’ implies. So much so that the question of Israel has become the Jewish question of the 21st century: do we want to hear what Jews have to say about what emancipation means in our historical situation, or not? And to hear the Jewish voice today is to hear that Israel is a constituent part of post-Holocaust Europe, of this Europe that knew it could not guarantee the safety of Jews. It is also to hear that it cannot repair its colonial crimes by dissociating itself from the necessity of Israel—which in no way means showing solidarity with all of its policies.
The Israel-Palestine question is indeed the expression of an insoluble European contradiction. Europe must actively recognize the autonomy of all peoples on this earth, and this imperative puts it at odds with the creation of a Jewish state on the historic land of the Jewish people, which—due to the near-total absence of this people from this land for two thousand years—was inhabited by other populations when the Jews returned there. And it must recognize that this state, on this land, is suited to the situation that the European emancipation project encountered after the Holocaust because it confirms the right to self-determination of this people and is the only political entity that can guarantee the security of all Jews in the world. This contradiction cannot be dialecticized. The attempt to do so through anticolonial discourse based on international law eliminates the necessity of the Jewish state; the attempt to do so through discourse on the greatness of Western civilization, which on these occasions is called ‘Judeo-Christian,’ eliminates the rights of Palestinians. To recognize this contradiction is to settle into a political life conscious of the flaw that founds modern post-1945 politics, but it is also the only way to give genuine meaning to the idea of the ‘search for justice’, namely that one knows one has not yet found it.
Julia Christ
