“October 7 tells the whole story of Israel”

How, personally, did you experience October 7?

My name is of Jewish origin, I am Catholic and I speak Arabic. On October 7, my conscience was literally torn apart. I studied the Near and Middle East at Sciences Po. I lived in Beirut, reported in Iran and Afghanistan when I was a journalist. I even interviewed Hassan Nasrallah (the eliminated Hezbollah leader) one-on-one in 1996! So I had some idea of ​​the conflict. But on October 7, all my abstractions, all my representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were shattered. The worst has happened! No mind can prepare to experience this. All events are now experienced for me in the light of this moment.

Did an encounter particularly upset you?

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The first meeting: Jonathan Silver. This young man is the son of Viviane Silver. The latter, now 70 years old, campaigned for decades for peace. For thirty years, she traveled back and forth between the Gaza Strip and Israeli hospitals to take Palestinians for treatment. For thirty years, she organized marches with Palestinian and Israeli women, jointly, hand in hand, in each other’s footsteps, with their turquoise scarves to plead for peace. Viviane Silver was murdered on October 7, in the early hours of the day. She was one of the very first victims. That day, just before she died, she was on the phone with her son. In her last message, she wrote to him: “My son, I feel your presence. »

The first instinct of Jonathan, his son, was to say: “I was a coward for abandoning my mother’s fight for peace. » She knew what awaited her. She was fighting against the war, and she found herself facing these terrorists. Her son decided to resume his fight, his mother’s fight for peace. The first time I met him, there was no hatred in his words. There was no desire for revenge. He uttered this astonishing and heartbreaking sentence: “You don’t avenge babies by killing babies. Revenge has never been a military strategy. »

We understand, by reading you, that the relatives of the victims are opposed to the policy pursued by Netanyahu… Does this mean that we must abandon the hostages?

Most of the victims were opposed to Netanyahu before October 7. They were pacifists. They were peaceniksdoves! With October 7, they felt a double pain, not only because they had experienced this tragedy, but also because it would last as long as their loved ones were held there, in Gaza for the most part, in the tunnels. , at the risk of perishing at the hands of their executioners or under the bombs of their own army. What a terrible trap set for the hostages, the families of hostages, and even Palestinian civilians. The Islamist terrorists of Hamas use them as a human shield. We have all seen the images of these tunnels dug under a Palestinian child’s bedroom, with walls covered in Mickey drawings!

What is your view on the import of the conflict into France?

I am a novelist, I was a journalist, and now I run writing workshops at Sciences Po. When I returned from Israel last December, I resumed my classes in a tense context, with the mobilization of some small pro-Palestinian student groups. And then, the leader of LFI, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, came to give a conference, or more precisely to hold a meeting. I slipped into the lecture hall to see it with my own eyes, to feel it. The Boutmy lecture hall was full of students committed to his cause. Mélenchon literally ignited minds. A few days later, LFI candidate for the European elections Rima Hassan called for “uprising”a term with strong connotations, which can be translated as “intifada” in Arabic. The far left blew on the embers to sow chaos at Sciences Po.

Has this had any impact on your students?

At the beginning, from February, I shared my experience with them. This is the goal of this workshop: how do we write history? How do you describe an event? After Mélenchon passed, I felt the fracture. The tension. Repeated blockages. Absences… During the last writing workshop, when taking stock, I asked them how they got through this year. Two thirds of the class responded that they had been afraid, afraid to express an opinion, afraid to debate! We are all responsible for this situation. We teachers, but also people of letters, parents, citizens, politicians. Democracy is based on debate. If we can no longer debate, if we can no longer evoke an idea in nuance, it is the end of democracy and the beginning of tyranny. It takes a lot of will to escape this trap, real political will!

“If we can no longer debate, it’s the end of democracy”

After the IDF ground intervention in Lebanon, do you fear an escalation of the conflict?

Iran has lost its outposts around Israel. Hamas is in bad shape. Hezbollah no longer has a leader. The missiles fired by Iran bounced off the Iron Dome, the anti-missile defense system that protects the Jewish state. But the threat remains. Israel is engaged in a long existential war. This has been going on for years. For a time, in the 1980s, they claimed to be Marxists. Today, they claim to be Islamists and rely on Iran. He is a powerful, tough and determined enemy. The outcome of this conflict could well depend on the next American elections.