Bernard-Henri Lévy: Maddening in His Self-Assurance, But with His Heart in the Right Place

The French writer Bernard-Henri Lévy is what is called a “public intellectual,” who writes about issues of the day. He has been horrified at the upsurge in antisemitism around the world, and has written a book of analysis and fury — “Israel Alone.” He is now on a book tour, primarily on campuses in both Canada and the United States. Lévy has given an interview to Canada’s National Post, the full text of which you can find here: “‘I believe they are fascists’: French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy on the Canadian anti-Israel protests,” by Tristin Hopper, National Post, November 6, 2024:

An ad for Israel Alone in the trade publication Shelf Awareness was recently pulled, with editors saying that a pro-Israel book would upset their readers. You’ve taken up many controversial causes, you have faced protests, criticisms and in 2008 you were targeted for assassination by Islamist militants. In terms of opprobrium you’ve faced throughout your life, how does it compare to what faces a Western intellectual who unapologetically champions the cause of Israel?

You put it very well. I’ve seen this kind of incident so much in my life that this is not going to intimidate me. When you’ve spent nearly two years in the Ukrainian trenches, when you’ve filmed Bakhmut or Chasiv Yar under bombardment, when you’ve seen comrades fall just a few metres away, do you really think a miserable little guy like this is going to scare me?

The issue, however, lies with American authors. Especially, the younger authors. Because there is nevertheless an extraordinary climate at play here. Here is a country, two countries in fact — Canada and the United States — that were once homelands for persecuted Jews around the world. Here are two countries that were possible refuges for all threatened Jews worldwide. And now, in these countries, it’s the very name of Israel — and, soon, that of the Jews — that is becoming unpronounceable.

A double bind. The First Amendment: Absolute freedom of speech. Antisemitism: one of these so-called “free” expressions has deadly consequences. This is where we are at. This is the situation of Jews in North America. All communities on the continent have the right to protection. All have the right to guard against provocations. Except one — the Jewish minority.

Lévy overstates — as he so often does, for effect — the dangers Jews in North America face. They have sufficient protection from the police, protection that is reinforced whenever there is a heightened threat. They do not face anything like the attacks that Jews in Western Europe must endure.

You have long argued that failure to defeat Vladimir Putin in Ukraine would have dire ramifications for the rest of the democratic West. Do you see Israel’s war with Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and others as similarly being a bulwark between the West and illiberalism?  

Of course. It’s the same thing. There would never have been the Gaza War if there hadn’t been the war in Ukraine. What I mean is that Iran would never have taken the initiative to unleash the dogs of Hamas if it hadn’t observed our timid response to Putin unleashing his own dogs on Ukraine.

Here he gets things wrong, hysteron-proteronically. Hamas started planning its attack on Israel before Russia invaded Ukraine. So it is not true to say that had there not been a war in Ukraine, “there would never have been the Gaza War.”

Similarly, if we abandon Israel, if we allow Hamas or Hezbollah to claim victory, if we give them even an inch of victory and credit, then I predict that the year will not end without China invading Taiwan….

An unexpected observation, this linking of the Middle East conflict to China’s calculations on whether to invade Taiwan. However, there is no chance that either Hamas or Hezbollah will be able to claim victory; the IDF is taking care of that, and now that Trump has won, American pressure on Israel to agree to ceasefires before it has thoroughly dismantled both terror groups will end. All Israel has to do is hold on tight until January 20, 2025.

Israel Alone describes your lifelong advocacy for a “two state solution.” You describe your heart “pounding with joy” after the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, believing it to be the first step towards a Palestinian state. Many others who once harboured dreams of peaceful Israeli and Palestinian nations living side by side have utterly abandoned that notion after October 7. Do you still see viability in the idea, at least within your lifetime?

Yes. But on one condition: That Hamas and all those like it permanently leave power. And that the Palestinians, freed from their bad shepherds, wholeheartedly accept the existence of Israel and its legitimacy….

Since that will never happen, we needn’t worry about a possible “two-state solution,” which would have Israel squeezed back within the 1949 armistice lines, with an eight-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea, and a Palestinian revanchist state preparing to launch another assault on a dimidiated Israel. Lévy is apparently incapable of jettisoning the dangerous notion of a “two-state solution.” When he pontificates about what Israel “must do,” that insistence on “two states for two peoples” is his fatal error.

Israel Alone warns against embracing the recent pro-Israel sentiments of the historically antisemitic European far-right, be they Hungary’s Viktor Orban or Marine Le Pen in your own country. Here in Canada, the tide of antisemitism we’re seeing is coming almost entirely from left-wing parties and left-coded institutions such as academia or organized labour. What do you say to the argument that this tide of antisemitism, more so than others, sprung from progressive corners?

You are right. But so what? This is indeed the paradox of the Jewish fate today. To be hated by people who claim the humanist values that we ourselves invented, and to be supported by others who carry values opposed to those we have always embodied — that’s the paradox.

I know well, to answer your question specifically, that the European far right now claims to support Israel; I know they now pretend to be philosemitic. But is that how people change? Is that how a party whose DNA is deeply marked by hatred of Jews makes a historical shift? One does not break with antisemitism by decree. One does not erase the past by a simple decision of a political committee. To be a friend of Jews and of Israel requires profound work. A work of self-reflection. A work of truth and memory. These far-right movements, in Europe and in the United States, have not done this work. This only makes Israel’s solitude all the more terrible.

Bernard-Henri Lévy presumes to know what those on the right who claim to be friends of Israel “really think” about Jews. They have not, he insists, jettisoned their antisemitism. On what basis does he consign to the outer darkness of antisemitism such supporters of Israel as Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni? Or even of Canada’s Conservative Party head, Pierre Poilievre? Where is the evidence that any of these people are antisemites? There is none.

Though Bernard-Henri Lévy can be maddening in the self-assurance with which he comments on the world — his heart may be in the right place but his mind is not always sufficiently well-informed — I think he’s worth a look. And so is his book of sorrows, Israel Alone.