The diplomatic isolation of Israel during the war in Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre will go down in history as a moral failure and a defeat of humanity, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy said on Thursday.
“The absence of support for Israel will be considered by future historians as a moment of huge disgrace for the West,” Lévy told JNS in an interview in Tel Aviv. “It is a defeat of humanity and a moral defeat. It is the loss of any moral compass.”
Lévy, who lives in Paris, rushed to Israel the day after the Oct. 7 attacks and the following year penned Israel Alone, a book about the lack of diplomatic support for the Jewish state in the West.
“I was beyond shocked,” he said.
He was back in Israel on Thursday to deliver the keynote address at the annual conference on contemporary antisemitism hosted by the Comper Center for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism at the University of Haifa. The gathering is the largest annual academic conference on modern-day antisemitism, drawing an estimated 550 participants, including 250 in-person presenters, with others joining virtually from abroad.
The 77-year-old French intellectual, commonly known as BHL, decried the surge in antisemitism, which he called “unprecedented in my lifetime,” noting that he rarely gives lectures in France for security reasons and that the only safe place for him to speak in the United Kingdom is a synagogue.
“Even if I come to speak about philosophy or non-Jewish issues, the only safe place for me in the U.K. is a synagogue,” he said.
Lévy noted that he has lived under police protection in Paris for more than two decades, since the publication of his book about the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan.
Mindful of the growing exodus of Jews from Western European cities, Lévy said he is determined to fight back.
“Europe would have no future if Jews stepped back,” he said, blaming a toxic mix of “stupid, illiterate, and barbaric anti-Semites” and a French leadership whose stance on Israel often adds fuel to the fire.
“The situation gives me the will to resist, to fight, and to win,” he said.
A staunch centrist of the old guard, Lévy said he opposes both the overtly antisemitic far left in France and the pro-Israel far right, which he views with equal concern. Last year, he boycotted a Jerusalem conference on antisemitism because of the participation of a senior far-right party leader.
“It is a dark moment for Jews all over the world,” he said. “We need to be proud, strong and wise.”
