Translated from French by André Hansen

Is the destruction of Gaza a consequence of the October 7, 2023 attack, or is it also the outcome of a long process of dispossession and eradication?
Do Palestinians have the right to resist the occupation?
Is talking about genocide anti-Semitism?

Enzo Traverso goes to the root of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict by calling history into question and offers a critical interpretation that overturns the dominant one-sided perspective.

Israel is usually described as a democratic island in the middle of an obscurantist ocean, and Hamas as a movement inspired by bloodthirsty fanaticism. Gaza today recalls the golden age of colonialism, when the West perpetrated genocides in Asia and Africa in the name of its civilizing mission. Its essential assumptions remain the same: civilization versus barbarism, progress versus intolerance. But if a genocidal war is unleashed in the name of fighting anti-Semitism, it is our own ethical values and political norms that are tarnished: the assumptions of our moral conscience—the distinction between oppressor and oppressed, perpetrators and victims—risk being turned upside down. In his urgent essay, Traverso untangles the knotted skeins of history and memory that dominate the intellectual and political debate since October 7.