Turning point, failure, moral abdication

Gaza has become a shorthand, denoting a political and moral breaking point. New books from four internationally renowned intellectuals (all male) explore the circumstances that have made a global symbol out of Gaza. Chief among them is the fact that mass death and even a suspected genocide are being tolerated, condoned and supported by Western governments.

What, then, are the ethical and political implications? And how does the destruction of Gaza affect our historical consciousness, our culture of remembrance, and Jewish self-understanding?

None of these authors take the easy way out, and of course, none deny the Hamas crimes of 7 October 2023. Some common ground aside, the approaches, narrative styles and motivations of Indian essayist Pankaj Mishra, American Jewish columnist Peter Beinhart, French anthropologist Didier Fassin and Jewish-Italian historian Enzo Traverso are as varied as their respective backgrounds.

Pankaj Mishra dedicates a separate chapter to Germany

Let's start with Pankaj Mishra's "The World after Gaza", which offers the richest reading material. Mishra is a bestselling author whose narratives of world history are told from a non-Western, primarily Asian, perspective, always with reference to the work of important intellectuals beyond the Western hemisphere.

Anyone who has read Mishra's 2012 work, "From the Ruins of Empire" will recognise Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. He reappears in this book alongside the German cultural Zionist Martin Buber, who advocated for peaceful coexistence with the Arab population of Palestine. The two men did, in fact, meet.

Unconventional juxtapositions such as this—or indeed, his comparison of Theodor Herzl and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the spiritual father of Pakistan—are what makes Mishra's book so fascinating, even for readers well-versed in the Middle East. 

The 56-year-old Mishra is extremely well-read, and he attends to that which younger authors in the decolonial camp often neglect, namely the wider historical scope of Jewish experience, which he links to the history of other oppressed people and those hoping for liberation.

There is an autobiographical undertone here. Growing up as a member of an Indian, Hindu-nationalist, Brahmin family, Mishra admired Zionism (a Moshe Dayan poster hung above his bed as a boy) and to this day, advises against an over-emphasis on settler-colonial ideology when analysing Israel's statehood.

But today's Israel, he argues, has derived a "dark meaning" from the Holocaust (which Mishra previously regarded as a universal moral point of reference) and has institutionalised it in "a machinery of repression" against the Palestinians.

Mishra wrote the last lines of his book after Donald Trump's election victory. This adds a certain bleakness to his summary which is at odds with other, brighter passages. The post-Gaza world is a "bankrupt and exhausted" one, he writes; Israel's policies are its harbinger, and the expulsion of the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank is almost unstoppable. Yet international solidarity has alleviated "the great loneliness of the Palestinians", and this at least offers hope.

It should be added that Mishra devotes a whole chapter to Germany's policy on Israel, and it is a scathing critique (first published by the Guardian under the title "Israel and the delusions of Germany's memory culture"). According to Mishra, Germany's post-war desire for normalisation—whether through philosemitism, the concept of Staatsräson, or "proud and ostentatious self-reproach"—has reached a dead end, namely, renewed complicity with a murderous ethno-nationalism.

Enzo Traverso warns against the weaponisation of remembrance

The Jewish-Italian historian Enzo Traverso makes this point even more sharply: "Mobilising the memory of one genocide to condone another genocide in the present is something new and historically unprecedented."

In fact, the so-called "German question" is Traverso's point of departure in his essay, "Gaza Faces History", not least because, as an Italian, he has always admired Germany for its work of remembrance.

Traverso (67), who has lived in France for many years and taught both there and in the US, has had a distinguished publishing career spanning decades with eloquent works on the Shoah and the history of Jewish ideas. Over a decade ago, in "The End of Jewish Modernity"’ (published in English in 2016), he expressed his concern about how a once socially progressive Jewish humanism was being overtaken by conservative Zionism.

His latest essay only found a German publisher with some difficulty (it was finally published by Wirklichkeit Books in November 2024). Traverso's well-considered yet provocative analogies make for uncomfortable reading.

In "Gaza Faces History", Traverso, who formerly self-identified as a Trotskyist, compares the German mainstream's conviction that Israel cannot commit genocide because it is Jewish, to the attitude of Communists imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps who subsequently denied the existence of Soviet gulags on the basis that socialism stands for freedom.

Traverso takes a far more nuanced approach than, say, Judith Butler on the legitimacy of militant Palestinian resistance against the occupation. Even in a struggle that is legitimate under international law, he points out, there are illegitimate and reprehensible methods which should be punished. 7 October was an act of terrorism, but not a pogrom.

Historically, there are numerous examples of oppressed groups rebelling through ugly violence, including atrocities committed by certain Italian partisan groups. But this reality has faded from consciousness, not least because of a politics of memory, "focused almost exclusively on the suffering of the victims, aiming to present the cause of the oppressed as a triumph of innocence".

With the destruction of Gaza, the educational power of Holocaust remembrance has entered a state of crisis, according to Traverso: "How can the memory of the Shoah still be defended at all, after a genocide was legitimised with it?" he has asked. He argues that remembrance is in danger of being seen as a weapon of Western dominance, especially in the global South.

Peter Beinart holds on to a utopian vision of equality

With "Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza", Peter Beinart has written a book version of the kind of dispute over Israel at the inter-generational Jewish family table, that is a speciality of the United States.

Beinart is a 54-year-old columnist, journalism professor and editor at "Jewish Currents", a long-established quarterly of the Jewish left, and his book is a passionate plea for a new Jewish narrative, one in which self-protection no longer means subjugating others, "block[ing] out the screams" and declaring oneself innocent.

"We must now tell a new story to answer the horror that a Jewish country has perpetrated, with the support of many Jews around the world," writes Beinart.

To this end, he proposes not just a blizzard of arguments supporting a non-Zionist view of the Middle East conflict but also appeals from a religious perspective, addressing those who refuse to shake his hand in synagogue.

When Beinart wrote "I no longer believe in a Jewish state" in The New York Times five years ago, it was a scandal; Beinart had been considered the most prominent figure in liberal Zionism.

This book too has an autobiographical overtone. Beinart's parents come from South Africa, and his grandparents' family tree grows from Lithuanian, Russian and Egyptian roots. Out of this diaspora grew pride in Israel, a pride which began to fade for Beinart once Palestinians opened up to him about their lives. In the book, he describes these friendships with gratitude.

In the United States, Beinart has received death threats from radical right-wing Jews, yet he continues to hold on to a utopia of equality. Just as apartheid was overcome in South Africa, Israel-Palestine could also set a humanistic example for humanity: "Perhaps this is what it means for the Jewish people to bless humanity in our time. It means liberating ourselves from supremacy so, as partners with Palestinians, we can help liberate the world." It is Beinart's hope that Gaza will mark a turning point in Jewish history.

Didier Fassin emphasises the inequality of life

The French anthropologist and physician Didier Fassin has often dealt with the inequality of life, both in his research and in his leadership of Médecins Sans Frontières. That inequality is now the focus of his writing in "Moral Abdication: How the World Failed to Stop the Destruction of Gaza".

Tolerating or supporting the destruction of Gaza—which Fassin describes as a "moral abdication" and an ethical failure—will leave an indelible mark on the conscience of those societies involved.

"Without a doubt, what will haunt memories the longest, including perhaps in Israel itself, is how the inequality between lives has been paraded on the stage of Gaza," Fassin writes. In a similar context, Pankaj Mishra speaks of an "inner wound", of the burden of grief over guilt arising from complicity. Didier Fassin goes one step further. Those in the West who contributed to the destruction of Gaza can no longer credibly invoke human rights. That is a devastating judgment.

Pankaj Mishra: The World after Gaza 
Penguin
February 2025 

Enzo Traverso: Gaza Faces History
Other Press
October 2024

Peter Beinart: Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza 
Atlantic Books  
January 2025 

Didier Fassin: Moral Abdication
Verso
January 2025