“I hate wars,” the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy tells me this week, “but I’ve witnessed many up close, and for 50 years I’ve been going to the front lines to bear witness, to write, and to use my weapon – the pen – whenever I can to support just causes.

“What’s happening now is no different. It’s a war that Israel did not wish for even for a second – and one it must win. It’s about Israel’s survival, but it’s also about justice, freedom, and human rights.”

“I jumped on the first plane to Israel,” he recounted to his European readers on October 23, just days after Oct. 7, vividly describing his impressions from Sderot, Beersheba, Kfar Gaza, and the area around, long before the ground incursion into the strip. But unlike other opinion leaders around the world, his solidarity with Israel did not wane in the passing weeks. On the contrary – through the pages of newspapers and interviews, he has issued a consistent, clear call: The world must not leave Israel alone in its battle against Hamas.

This, among other things, is also what prompted him to recently write and publish, amidst the atmosphere of Israel-hatred and antisemitism pervading Europe and North America, his book “The Loneliness of Israel.” The book has been on French bookshelves for a few weeks now and is soon to be released in the United States as well.

Lévy has never been bound by the intellectual bon ton of his time – be it as a philosopher who challenged the neo-Marxist orthodoxy and the new leftist spirit of his generation or as the founder of the “New Philosophers” group in the late 1960s. The same holds true for his multi-disciplinary approach throughout his prolific career, which has included years of journalistic work, literary writing, and filmmaking, culminating in a series of documentary films from the battle zones of Ukraine, the latest of which was recently screened in France and the United States.

The similarities between the two countries, Ukraine and Israel, and between the two wars, especially concerning the Western world’s attitude toward them, will resurface time and again in our conversation, held just before he arrives in Israel to present his book at an event held in his honor at Netanya Academic College.

Q: Israel will mark its 76th Independence Day just days after the interview, and the title of your new book is hardly the most joyous of birthday presents. Is Israel really so alone?

“Yes, it’s utterly alone, more than ever before. The world doesn’t understand it either, and it’s reviled by everyone. There’s absolute ignorance about it, about the history of the state, and about the place of the State of Israel in Jewish history.

“That’s why I wrote the book. It answers simple questions. It goes back to the basics of the State of Israel and asks the most basic questions, around which there’s the most ignorance: Why does Israel exist? In what sense is it a colonial phenomenon? How can a people present in a place for 3,000 years be considered occupiers? And so on. People in Europe have no inkling about any of these things.”

Q: We’re talking about a world that questions the most fundamental thing: Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

“Exactly. That’s what’s meant when people sing in the streets of Paris or New York, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’ The meaning of that chant is the erasure of Israel, its elimination as a Jewish state and as a state altogether.”

Q: So who has left Israel alone? Who has abandoned it?

“Its allies, who’ve succumbed to public opinion at home. They’re still Israel’s allies, but today they’re more cautious about anything concerning it.”

Double standards

Lévy’s preoccupation with “The Loneliness of Israel” is especially relevant this week, as the world seems to be negotiating with Hamas, recognizing some of its demands, and not committing to its elimination. “I hate being right about this, but the title of my book is still valid,” he says regretfully. “Despite the wave of solidarity with Israel after Iran’s attack on the night of April 13, the loneliness is returning with a vengeance.

“Israel’s allies are saying: Jews are allowed to be strong, but not too strong. To defend themselves – but only up to a point. What country would allow its citizens to be attacked like that? None! And yet Israel is being asked to restrain itself. There’s no limit to the double standards.

“The problem with Hamas is that it’s not a normal, rational enemy, and yet we in the West keep trying to treat it as one. I said Russia is a terrorist state and should be treated as such – well, the same goes for Hamas, especially with Russia backing the terrorist organization. Of course, Iran is backing it too, and in a sense, so is Turkey – not to mention Qatar, which continues to give refuge to Hamas leaders and has the gall, on top of everything, to play the role of mediator.”

Q: Does that mean Israel needs to “finish the job” in Rafah and defeat Hamas despite the international backlash?

“Yes. I’ve been saying from the start that the way to win in Gaza is to go through Rafah. Hamas must be dismantled for Israel’s future, but also for the future of the Palestinians. Israel and the Palestinians must be liberated from Hamas. The world needs a Hamas-free space – from the river to the sea.”

Q: But the international community is pressuring Israel to end the war and reach a ceasefire.

“Western leaders, led by President Joe Biden, should invest every effort in pressuring Hamas until it surrenders. As I wrote in the Wall Street Journal: Enough with these endless negotiations with the Qataris. Maximum pressure must be applied to Hamas. A military victory over Hamas is essential; there’s no other way for Israel and the region as a whole to move forward. Otherwise, Hamas will emerge victorious from this war and be able to take pride in having won.”

Q: In other words, go all the way.

“Absolutely. Israel must go all the way in this war. For its security, for the sake of the Palestinians, for the sake of the entire region, and for the world. Just like Ukraine, Israel is fighting for the values of democracy and freedom. Like the Kurds who fought against ISIS to defend their land but also to prevent the next 9/11 or the next Bataclan (the Paris theater where an attack took place in November 2015). Israel is in the same position, fighting on the same kind of front.”

A war of existence

“Israel’s victory is a victory for freedom, for democracy, for everything right and just, whereas a Hamas victory is a victory for barbarism, for terror, for murder and rape,” he tells me when I press him again on the international pressure. “An Israeli victory is the victory of the defenders of Ukraine in the trenches of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, and of the children hiding in shelters in Kharkiv.

“It’s the victory of the Uyghurs, of the brave Kurds still defending us from ISIS, of the Nigerian Christians who have only stones against the killers of Boko Haram and Fulani, and of all those who don’t want war – but must fight to be free. A Hamas victory is a victory for the Islamic Republic, for Russia, for Turkey, for China, for extremist Islam. To allow such a thing – that is, to push Israel to stop the war – would not just be a defeat for Israel, but for all of us. And that is unacceptable.”

Q: So how do you explain the international pressure?

“The American elections. It’s small politics. It’s sad, but it’s the truth. I was surprised by President Biden’s behavior. On one hand, the military and economic aid keeps flowing. On the other, you can clearly sense that he’s hearing the protests and the rumblings coming from his base. Franklin Foer recently published an article in The Atlantic: ‘The Golden Age of Jewish America is Over.’ I think that’s tragically correct.”

Q: Time for Aliyah – for You?

“Perhaps, but for now it’s not my choice, nor the role I’ve given myself. My role is to fight here, in France. To explain to the French that if there is a true, great republic – in the good sense that word has in France – then that republic is Israel. A liberal, multi-cultural republic with the rule of law.”

Q: What exactly are you trying to explain to them and to the world?

“Historically, the world has forgotten about the need for a State of Israel. It has forgotten that if nations ultimately gave the Jews this small strip of land called Israel, it was to erect a barrier, to build a fortress against the rivers of Jewish blood spilled by hatred, pogroms, and the Holocaust over thousands of years. Today, it seems, no one understands that Israel is waging a war of existence.”

Q: Which is something, unlike many others, you insisted on witnessing firsthand from day one.

“That’s right. I came to Israel on instinct. On Saturday morning at 9 a.m., I saw the first news alerts on my phone. I understood something enormous was happening. Not a regular event – but the event, with a capital T. I decided to get on the first plane and go to Sderot, and then to the kibbutzim.

“It was a reflex, an instinct. The things I saw are in the book I wrote. I was with ZAKA. The bodies that were found in Kfar Aza had already been buried. Only the bodies of the Hamas killers remained, and body parts, pieces of skin they couldn’t identify that hadn’t yet decomposed. I’ll never forget those images, those smells.”

Q: What kind of reactions are you getting?

“It seems the book has shaken some people. Maybe not convinced them, but shaken them. People whose minds aren’t made up, who’ve been manipulated, but who still heard my arguments. The battle isn’t lost, far from it.”

Q: Could it be that things are simply not being conveyed accurately to the world?

“I don’t think there’s an issue with the information people are receiving. The data is available to them. The problem is that people really don’t want to hear. There are too many preconceptions, too many clichés. A thick layer of false knowledge has accumulated, preventing people from knowing the facts, from knowing what really happened. It’s a phenomenon we’ve known since Spinoza and Freud – willful ignorance. That’s what’s driving people now.”

Q: You use a harsh term in the book: the denial of October 7. Like Holocaust denial, except here you’re pointing to simultaneity. In other words, denial in real-time.

“That’s exactly it. There was a first event, October 7, and immediately after, a second event – the erasure of October 7. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a thing happen simultaneously.”

Academic wilderness

Q: After the recent decision against Israel at the UN, you recently referred to the UN as an entity in a “brain-dead” state.

“The UN is in the same state the League of Nations was in 1938, only worse. In the book, I’ve compiled the statements, the non-statements, the hypocrisy, the frivolity, and the lies of UN agencies from day one of the war. It’s terrible. The UN is dead. It’s still twitching a bit, but it’s dead. The time is approaching when we’ll need to invent something else.”

Q: You’re referring to the decision in March.

“Yes, we’re entering a dangerous zone. We’re seeing how an empire like America is dancing two steps forward and one step back. Historically, Washington hasn’t always supported Israel unconditionally, and we mustn’t take its support for granted. We saw that in its latest abstention.”

Q: This adds to the International Criminal Court.

“It’s an absurdity. A scandal. A completely distorted situation. History will judge all those who twisted the truth.”

Q: I think some of what you’re saying also applies to the intellectual sphere and academia in particular. How did the academic establishment reach this point?

“It’s something that’s been brewing for a long time. I remember a lecture at a university in San Francisco ten years ago, and another at a Hillel organization in New York 15 years ago. Everything we’re seeing today began taking shape back then. What students no longer understand is that even if there are two extreme right-wing ministers in Israel, even if Netanyahu wants to reform the Supreme Court – Israel itself still embodies the liberal values they’re fighting for. I’ll say it again: all the liberal and progressive values.”

Q: But it’s more than anti-Israel or anti-Zionist sentiment. It’s antidemitism, and a profound sense of insecurity that Jews feel at prestigious institutions, in intellectual ivory towers, much of whose legacy and achievements were authored by Jews. What does that say about the world of learning?

“It’s a bit like the question that was asked when the Weimar Republic collapsed. It was the place that represented the pinnacle of intellectualism, the place where Goethe lived and Hegel taught. It had all the symbols of the Enlightenment, of freedom of research and thought. It was the place to which Jewish science, knowledge, and research contributed greatly to its excellence. But then that place turned into an intellectual desert, led by the most racist sciences, the most delusional linguistic research, and Nazi stormtroopers. How could this happen? How did this regression occur? That’s more or less the question we’re asking ourselves today when we see these universities.”

Q: It raises a somber question: Have the intellectuals betrayed us? Where is the Émile Zola of our time?

“I believe these intellectuals exist, but they’re younger. Fortunately, they’re here, they exist. I’ve seen the reactions to my book. My readers are young, and that’s wonderful and encouraging.”

Q: Still, they seem to be pushed to the margins. In today’s reality, Jonathan Glazer and Judith Butler can freely speak out against Israel, while Israel supporters fear raising their voices.

“We need to look at it from both sides. Glazer has disgraced himself in the eyes of an entire group of artists in Hollywood. Butler gave a lecture at the Sorbonne but was then barred from giving her follow-up lectures. I’m trying to say there’s an ideological war raging here, a fierce, stubborn war. The Jews and their friends are indeed at a disadvantage, but they haven’t lost yet.”

Q: It seems to be getting harder to draw a line between opposition to Israel or Zionism and antisemitism.

“It’s not just hard – it’s already impossible. It’s the same thing. In other words, using a new word to say the same thing. In France, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left party is at the forefront of this phenomenon. It’s terrible to say it, even depressing, but it’s the truth. Antisemitism has become a stream that stands on its own in Western political life.”

Q: Students protesting not just in the US, but in France too. Even at institutions like the prestigious Sciences Po in Paris, which police had to storm to evacuate barricaded students. How is the French academic community receiving this?

“There’s no doubt the academic world is worried, but all of France is watching this rout of the spirit. It’s not a subversive spirit that has infiltrated the French workshops that produce the elite, because ultimately this subversive spirit is part of the existing order in France, part of the French tradition. The problem in this case is that it’s stupid subversion, pitiable subversion that seduces people.

“In 1968, during the student protests, we were rebelling because of the Vietnam War, but we were still humanists. Our true aspiration was the liberation of mankind, and antisemitism, like terrorism, was forbidden. The central Maoist group of those years – the Proletarian Left – disbanded after the massacre of the Israeli athletes in Munich. In other words, the moment terrorism appeared. What we’re seeing today is a caricature, a joke of what happened back then. And Judith Butler, compared to Michel Foucault, is a joke.“

Q: What forces are shaping public opinion in France regarding Israel?

“There are two: From the left, as I said, it’s the extremism of Mélenchon, the return of that old antisemitic socialist tradition that began with the Dreyfus Affair. But you also have a second tradition, from the right, that started with Archbishop Marcion in the second century.

“He was a divisive archbishop whose core belief boiled down to the idea that the new Christianity must uproot any remaining roots connecting it to Judaism. According to his doctrine, the great divide between Judaism and Christianity lies in the nature and character of God in each religion: the God of love for the Christians, the God of vengeance for the Jews.

“This division is idiotic. Marcion didn’t take into account the fact that the Christian commandment to love stems directly from Moses’ commandments. But this God, the God of vengeance, is what took root with Marcion. This view has persisted through the generations, despite Marcion’s excommunication – and reemerges whenever we’re told in various ways that Israel is taking a vengeful approach to Hamas.

“I was in Israel on October 7, I’ve visited since, and I’ve never heard anyone actually talk about revenge. Justice – yes. Freeing the captives – yes. Destroying Hamas’ political and military capabilities – absolutely. But not revenge.”

Q: It seems their future in France and around the world is uncertain.

“The future of Jews is not assured anywhere. Not in Europe, as we’re seeing right now, and not in America, where we’re discovering an antisemitism I long suspected existed, which has now exploded in the face of American Jews. But even in Israel, the future of Jews is not assured, as October 7 proved. This is our existential condition today.”

Q: President Macron recently condemned some of the student protests, while in the same breath warning of “the death of Europe.”

“Macron acted like a good republican president regarding the student support for terrorism. He said: Here, in France, there is no room for justifying mass murder. But when it comes to Europe, it’s more complicated. It’s an old idea we have in Europe, that we view Europe as a beautiful, good idea in its historical sense, one that was created by itself and which doesn’t need to be dealt with, because it also develops naturally by itself. Macron said – no, Europe is an artificial creature that is by no means self-evident, and it can certainly collapse.”

First line of defense

Q: This connects to another statement of his, that the possibility of France sending troops to Ukraine cannot be ruled out.

“Here too he was right. I’ve filmed three movies in Ukraine, in the combat zones, and I’m among those who believe that the defense of Europe is taking place there. The first line of European defense is on the Ukrainian front, and the implication is that all major European nations must be prepared for anything.

“Which is why I also believe we must defend Israel. Of course, because of everything connected to Western values, but there’s another interest here: Our national defense, as the Americans say, is at stake. There will be no national security for France and nothing to stop terrorism if we don’t stop Hamas in Gaza.”

Q: It’s hard not to see a certain similarity between Israel’s geopolitical loneliness and that of France.

“I’ve said it many times, and showed it in my films. I interviewed IDF soldiers who went to fight alongside Zelenskyy’s army from the very start of the invasion of Ukraine. You’re right – it’s the same war, the same problem in both cases, the same struggle for freedom against tyranny.”

A lone soldier

Q: But let’s return to the book. Why now, specifically?

“I was meant to write this book a long time ago. Is there a Jewish writer in Europe or America who wasn’t destined to write such a book? That was my case. The tragedy of October 7 only expedited things.”

Q: A friend told me this is Bernard-Henri Lévy’s “J’Accuse.”

“That’s a great compliment to my book. I love Émile Zola very much. His ‘J’Accuse’ is a historical text, and even more so – it’s the birth certificate of the intellectuals in France.”

Q: He was specific. Whom are you accusing – and of what?

“Mélenchon, the ‘Squad’ – the farthest left wing of the Democratic Party in America – and all the bad lecturers teaching the wrong lesson to the world. The very many people that October 7 did not arouse compassion for the victims in, but rather – a wave of joy and hatred.”

Q: You also have substantial criticism in the book of Israel’s leadership and some of its ministers.

“That’s the last chapter of my book, called ‘If I Forget You, the Jewish Soul.’ My main argument towards the extremist ministers in this government is that they’ve forgotten the beauty, the nobility, the fragility, and the strength of the Jewish soul.”

Q: Still, I feel compelled to ask again – are we really alone?

“Yes, and I think this loneliness will grow. We need to get used to it – and resist it.”

Q: How so?

“Through a change of thought, through learning, through defending Israel, and through not giving in to threats. We need to remind the world, and Israelis too, that Israel is not just a geographical area on the globe – it’s also an area of the human spirit. It’s not just a geographical terrain – it’s also an ontological, existential category. If Israel disappears, all of that will disappear with it.”

Q: In your arena, the intellectual field, don’t you also feel a bit alone in defending Israel?

“Yes, sometimes. And to tell you the truth, it’s a bit frightening.”