Israel and the West, what future?

The shock wave of the October 7 massacres will continue for a long time. Its repercussions on the Jews of Europe and the United States, and on relations between Israel and the West, are the subject of an interesting collective volume. Under the direction of the philosopher Bruno Karsenti, director of studies at the EHESS, The end of an illusion brings together a selection of fifteen articles published during the last year by the online magazine k. Founded in 2020 by a group of academics and journalists, with Stéphane Bou as editor-in-chief, its objective is to analyze the situation of Jews in Europe since the Shoah. The collection is rich in approaches, themes and perspectives.

It first analyzes the unrest caused by this attack throughout the Jewish world. “The Jews were exterminated in Israel”Bruno Karsenti emphasizes: the Jewish State has not been able to prevent this pogrom, although its main reason for existence is precisely to constitute a bulwark against these massacres that have haunted Jewish history from Antiquity to the 20th century.^my century. The consequences of this situation call into question, in particular, the memory of the Shoah, the relations between Israelis and the diaspora, and the ways of considering war and peace in the medium and long term. Also discussed is the resurgence of hatred towards Jews within the intellectual left (sociologist Eva Illouz criticizes Judith Butler’s positions) and the massive silence on rape as a weapon of war perpetrated by Hamas terrorists (philosopher Julia Christ highlights this significant indifference).

In the absence of being able to point out everything, a special mention should be reserved for the contribution of the linguist and philosopher Jean-Claude Milner, who addresses the evolution of relations between the United States and Israel. Over the past year, American support has become less and less unconditional. To understand this evolution and its scope, Milner proposes a more decisive structural explanation than the figure of Netanyahu. What is at stake, he says, is the tension between antagonistic conceptions of war and peace.

For a long time, Western doctrine has made peace the normal situation in relations between States. If it is interrupted, the war must be brief and allow a rapid return to a horizon of lasting peace. On the other hand, we too often forget that it happens, outside the West, that we consider war as the normal state of the world and peace as a momentary pause intended to prepare us for new attacks. In this context, a series of questions are operating clandestinely between Americans and Europeans, Jews and non-Jews, Israeli Jews and diaspora Jews: Is Israel or not, today, in the Western camp? Should it be or not? Depending on the answers we give to these questions, we will see that the future varies greatly, including the meaning of the two-state solution. A luminous diagram, from one of the great intellectuals of the time. R.-PS

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