YoThere is a significant difference between disappointment and disillusionment. Anyone who says they are disappointed means that they were deceived, that they made promises that they did not keep. You may express your disappointment to the person who caused it, overwhelm him with reproaches, and, finally, you may turn your back on him. The disillusioned person, on the other hand, is only to blame for being wrong about reality. That is why disillusionment generally forces true mental and then practical revolutions for which, by definition, we are not prepared.
October 7 did not cause any disappointment. No one expected anything better from Hamas than this kind of massacre; Israel’s weakness has simply raised eyebrows. On the other hand, many illusions have fallen, and this is what makes the event a historic threshold. However, a year later, the mental adaptation to the new reality is still underway.
The most important of these lost illusions refers to Israel as the guardian state of the Jewish people, capable through its military force and intelligence of preventing any attack against its territory. It is the idea that there is a refuge for every Jew in the world that has proven illusory. And no Israeli war, no matter how victorious, can hide this truth: power alone is not enough to build a refuge.
good moral conscience
Since the second Intifada [2000-2005] At least we were content, in Israel, in the diaspora and, more generally, in Western opinion, with a confinement of the Palestinian question that depended on force and ignored justice. This way of “managing” the situation was based on different reasons depending on the perspective. In Israel there is a feeling, expressed a thousand times, that there will be no partner on the other side. In the diaspora, it is the growing insecurity due to anti-Semitic violence that has led to complacency with the representation of Israel as a fortress without raising the question of its justice. As for Western opinion, that of Europe and the United States, I did not wish to look too closely as long as more or less calm, if not peace, remained.
On October 7, 2023, the Israelis discovered that it was an illusion to believe that force could contain force. What conclusion can we draw from this, other than the need to help the Palestinian actor become a true partner in a lasting peace process, instead of relying on division and rule? The diaspora, for its part, cannot help but wonder whether its consent to forget justice “over there” really constitutes the best relationship it can have with Israel, even as a potential refuge. You must completely change your vision about this State that matters so eminently to you and about the way in which it matters.
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