It’s an anecdote that Bertrand Badie, professor emeritus at Sciences Po Paris, often tells. The scene takes place in the middle of the “yellow vest” crisis. He is having a coffee on a Parisian terrace when suddenly a procession of demonstrators passes by dressed in the famous fluorescent safety vest. In the procession, the political science teacher, now retired, sees a Palestinian flag. He rushes and approaches the woman who is brandishing him. He asks her why. “Because they are like us, they suffer”she replies in substance.
This scene, which takes place well before October 7, 2023, reveals how powerful the symbols carried by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are. That, in particular, of the weak against the strong, of David against Goliath: the biblical imagination is never far away in the confrontation for a land which saw the birth of the three great monotheisms of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. , in order of appearance over time. War of religions? Of historical, territorial or even moral legitimacy? All dimensions are tangled in what is about to become the “Hundred Years’ War” of modern times. A multidimensional conflict whose echoes resonate from the United Nations to the most intimate of individuals, a conflict which crosses and tears apart the international community, societies – in particular French society, on edge on this subject -, but also communities , families, people. It is a mirror conflict in which everyone projects their vision of the world, their convictions, their values, their most deeply held beliefs.
Do we need further proof of the interest aroused by what is happening between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River? The comic strip by researcher Vincent Lemire and Christophe Gaultier entitled History of Jerusalem (Les Arènes, 2022) has just exceeded 300,000 sales. This phenomenon, although it began before the Hamas attack in Israel, has grown since then, in particular thanks to the always incisive, fair and balanced media interventions of Vincent Lemire. The same published, with Thomas Snégaroff, an educational work, Israel/Palestine. Anatomy of a conflict (Les Arènes, 136 pages, 17 euros): released in April, the work has already sold more than 30,000 copies. More than passion, this editorial enthusiasm reveals a thirst for knowledge, a need to understand an antagonistic situation often perceived by the general public as complex and above all insoluble.
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