French writer, filmmaker and human rights activist Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy was in Vancouver at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue Nov. 6, in conversation with the National Post\u2019s <\/i>Tristin Hopper. <\/i>(photo by Pat Johnson)<\/i><\/p>\n
Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy, a public intellectual so well-known in France that he is generally referred to simply as BHL, has thrown his energies into an \u201cemergency\u201d effort to defend Israel in a moment of history when the world has turned against the Jewish state.<\/p>\n
L\u00e9vy was in Vancouver at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue Nov. 6, in conversation with Tristin Hopper, a writer for the National Post<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Throughout his career as a reporter, commentator, filmmaker and activist, L\u00e9vy has written and spoken extensively about humanitarian crises in Bangladesh, Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia and many other flashpoints. Now, he said, \u201cI am pleading with all my energy for Israel and for the defence of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
His latest book \u2013 his 47th or 48th, he thinks \u2013 is Israel Alone<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s war is unique, he said, because it involves enemies who are not driven by ideas but by the nihilistic aim of destroying a nation and a people. The differentiation between antisemitism and anti-Zionism is irrelevant to Hamas and Hezbollah, said L\u00e9vy, noting that many of those killed on Oct. 7 were among Israel\u2019s leading peace activists.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose crimes have nothing to do with seeking a political solution to the suffering of Palestinians,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don\u2019t care about peace. They don\u2019t care about a two-state solution. They don\u2019t care about the fate of the old people. They only care about killing Jews. [The victims] could have been right-wing Jews. It happens that they were left-wing Jews, but they just don\u2019t care. For Hamas, there is not left-wing or right-wing Jews. There is just Jews who deserve to be hated, tortured and, if possible, killed.\u201d<\/p>\n
L\u00e9vy urges the world not to be misled into thinking that Hamas and Hezbollah are national liberation movements. \u201cThey are the proxies, the puppets, of a very powerful country, which is Iran,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
L\u00e9vy is optimistic because Israel is winning the war.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat makes me a little less optimistic, and even pessimistic, what sometimes discourages me, is the reaction of the world,\u201d he said. \u201cInstead of saying bravo to Israel, instead of saying thank you to Israel, instead of standing at the side of Israel, who is waging an existential war for [itself] but also a useful war for the rest of the world \u2013 instead of that, the rest of the world, sometimes the allies of Israel, mumble, object, groan, accuse and ask, demand, beg, require from Israel ceasefire, compromise, negotiation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you think about it, I don\u2019t see any precedent of a just war, a fair war, which is treated by the allies of the country that is waging it, with such strange behaviour,\u201d said L\u00e9vy. \u201cIt is unique.\u201d<\/p>\n
The West is responding like cowards to the threat of Iranian-backed Islamist terror, he argued, which has formed an alliance with Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russian regime. Part of this refusal to stand with the victims is an ingrained tendency in Western civilization, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of people in the West who love Jews when they are victims, who love to support them and to shed tears on their face when they are beaten, wounded and sometimes killed,\u201d he said, \u201cbut who don\u2019t like to see them proud and strong and behaving with heads up.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the positive side, L\u00e9vy believes, most people in Europe and North America are not irreversibly antisemitic or anti-Israel but are influenced by biased commentary. His new book is a tool for these people and those who engage with them, he said. \u201cThose [people] can be addressed with reasonable arguments, with historical facts, and \u2026 can be not only addressed but convinced, I\u2019m sure of that. That is the aim of this book.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canada has been a safe haven for generations of Jews, he said. But now, Canadian Jews hear fellow citizens calling for their destruction.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is the future of the Jewish communities in France and in Canada?\u201d he asked. \u201cI will tell you one thing. I know very few Jews who do not have, somewhere in the back of their mind, the precise or vague or very vague idea that they could go one day to Israel. This is the state of Jewry since 1948. To be a Jew means to be a good Canadian citizen, a good French citizen, but to have somewhere, even remotely, in the mind, the idea that Israel could be an option.\u201d<\/p>\n
The global condemnation of Israel is a reincarnation of a long-familiar trend, L\u00e9vy said. \u201cThe new argument of antisemitism, the new form, the new phase, the new name of the virus is anti-Zionism,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The best and \u201conly efficient way to be antisemitic today\u201d is to be anti-Zionist, he argued. Blaming Jews for deicide or some of the other historical justifications for antisemitism is no longer effective, he said. \u201cIf you say that today, honestly, you will not meet with great success. If one wants to hate with efficiency the Jews, there is only one way left.\u201d<\/p>\n
Israel has few supporters among non-Jews, he said, even among ostensible allies, whose support he described as often coming with conditions.<\/p>\n
L\u00e9vy called the former and future president of the United States, Donald Trump, \u201ca true ally of Israel, for sure, no doubt on that.\u201d But he also reminded the audience of an incident in the election campaign, during which Trump warned a Jewish audience that he would blame them for his loss if he were defeated.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if you are responsible for my defeat, within two years, Israel will disappear,\u201d L\u00e9vy paraphrased Trump. \u201cIt was a slip of the tongue probably. [But it meant that, in Trump\u2019s mind], the Jews deserve to be protected, but conditionally, if they supported [Trump], if they were good guys and good ladies, if they gave him victory.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schara Tzedeck\u2019s Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt welcomed the audience and acknowledged members of the Ukrainian, French and other communities in attendance. He also credited Robert Krell and Alain Guez for L\u00e9vy\u2019s visit to Vancouver.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" French writer, filmmaker and human rights activist Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy was in Vancouver at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue Nov. 6, in conversation with the National Post\u2019s Tristin Hopper. (photo by Pat Johnson) Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy, a public intellectual so well-known in France that he is generally referred to simply as BHL, has thrown his energies into an \u201cemergency\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45459,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6299,801,23639,974,3076,4330,22729,22725,463],"class_list":["post-45458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-activism","tag-antisemitism","tag-bernard-henry-levy","tag-books-2","tag-education","tag-israel","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-oct-7","tag-schara-tzedeck"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}