Connect with us

RSS

Israel Alone, Israel Unbowed

French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy addressing the 38th Zionist Congress. Photo: Screenshot.

JNS.org“He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin/He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.” So sang Bob Dylan on his buoyant 1983 album track “Neighborhood Bully,” the title of which is an ironic take on how much of the world views the State of Israel and the nation—as Dylan observed, “always on trial, just for being born”—that built it.

I remembered Dylan’s lyrics, which sadly have lost none of their currency four decades later, while I was reading the latest book by the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, Israel Alone. Just as Dylan conveys Israel’s grit in fighting back despite its stark isolation and its transformation by its enemies from victim into predator, Lévy’s book, sparked by the Hamas pogrom on Oct. 7 last year, communicates much the same spirit.

Unphased by the fact that he is writing about a rapidly moving target, the book is vintage Lévy, casually invoking thinkers and writers from Rashi to Pascal, from Hegel to Louis Aragon, as he dives into the Middle Eastern fray to then rise above it with his telling insights.

The book begins with Lévy’s arrival in Israel one day after the pogrom, which he defines as an “Event.” Like the “Black Swan” episodes that occasionally plague financial markets—unpredictable, unexpected and little-understood developments that can send the price of equities and assets crashing downwards—no one sees an “Event” coming, Lévy explains, “nor even its silent stirrings.” But once an “Event” manifests, it violently and rudely changes the future, tearing up the preconceptions we hold that give us comfort and a degree of certainty.

For Jews, both in Israel and outside, Oct. 7 marked a dramatic rupture with the concept of “Never Again” that had prevailed since the late 1940s, when the Jewish people emerged from the Holocaust still alive and achieved independence in our ancestral homeland. In the intervening decades, we garnered both pride and strength from the Israel Defense Forces in its spectacular defense of the country against a succession of invasions by Arab armies, as well as its spectacular one-off operations, notably the rescue of hostages at Entebbe Airport in Uganda in 1976 (I can still the hear the shrieks of joy from the kitchen of my grandparent’s London home when my grandfather picked up the paper and read the headline, dashing to the room where my brother and I were sleeping to break the news.)

Oct. 7 was the exact opposite. We watched with disbelief, sickness in our hearts, as the Hamas rapists and murderers ripped their way into Israel, crashing through a border that we had thought to be impenetrable. Suddenly, Israel seemed as small as it actually is and the IDF a shadow of what we had believed it to be. Centuries of Jewish suffering merged into one moment, as though the Cossacks and the Nazi Einsatzgruppen had traveled into our own time, joining with the Arab armies that had failed time and again over the previous eight decades to drive the Jews into the sea. That repellent ambition had, until that day, sounded like an empty slogan coined by perennial losers. Now, amid the rapes and mutilations and burning homes and sundry other cruelties, it seemed like our new reality.

Lévy says, and I agree with him, that he never seriously thought that Israel was faced with annihilation on that terrible morning. But, he adds, there is that “geosymbolic space that is no less influential in determining how people stand in the world”—a space where political realism and its calculations is dislodged by fear and memory. “October 7,” he writes, “marks the alignment, for the worse, of Israel with the diaspora.” Much later on, he reveals his love of “this little world of people stranded on the tiny strip of land they finally received, three-quarters of a century ago, left there by a West and by a larger world wet with the rivers of Jewish blood spilled into the torrent of centuries.”

He is far from being the only Jew who feels that intense love, and far from being the only Jew consumed with the abiding fear of living in a world where that tiny strip of land is no longer called Israel.

As I said, Lévy is writing here about a moving target, and much has occurred since he submitted his manuscript, providing both sorrow and satisfaction in equal measure. Sorrow at how divided Israel has become internally, when it should have been united; sorrow at the fate of the hostages seized by Hamas, many of them now dead and many of them still crying out to be rescued from Gaza’s fetid depths; sorrow at the global resurgence of an antisemitism—what Lévy calls the “Beast”—that deploys Israel as the gateway to attack and defame all Jews everywhere, and which denies in real time, as Lévy documents, the truth of what happened on Oct. 7; satisfaction at the manner in which Hamas has, by the accounts of its own commanders, been emasculated and decimated; satisfaction at the humiliating blows leveled at Iran and its proxies, especially Hezbollah, through a slew of assassinations and daring operations, like the pagers and hand-held radios that detonated in the pockets of Hezbollah terrorists across Lebanon during the last week. Lévy speaks for all of us when he writes that “the death of civilians in Gaza is not a massacre, and it is most certainly not a genocide.” To argue otherwise is, he declares, “a gift to the child-killers of Hamas, and an addition to the misery of the world.”

Lévy’s book is, of course, an early draft of a history that is still being made. We do not know for sure where that journey will lead, and we cannot discount the possibility of another “Event,” with all the trauma that will bring in the moment, and all the hatred that will flow towards us in its aftermath. Let us remember, therefore, the postcard that Sigmund Freud sent from Rome to one of his friends—a picture of the Arch of Titus on the front, with its stone carvings of Roman soldiers pillaging the Temple in Jerusalem, and on the back the simple handwritten message: “The Jew survives it!”

Because surviving is what we do, and we do so unbowed.

The post Israel Alone, Israel Unbowed first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War

Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.

Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.

“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”

GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’

Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.

“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.

“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.

“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.

After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”

RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL

Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”

Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.

“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”

Continue Reading

RSS

Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests

A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco

Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.

People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.

“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”

Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.

On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.

Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.

On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.

“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.

Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.

Continue Reading

RSS

Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan

Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2017 - 2023 Jewish Post & News