(July 9, 2026 \/ JNS)\n <\/p>\n
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 L\u00e9vy said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe absence of support for Israel will be considered by future historians as a moment of huge disgrace for the West,\u201d L\u00e9vy told JNS in an interview in Tel Aviv. \u201cIt is a defeat of humanity and a moral defeat. It is the loss of any moral compass.\u201d<\/p>\n
L\u00e9vy, 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was beyond shocked,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The 77-year-old French intellectual, commonly known as BHL, decried the surge in antisemitism, which he called \u201cunprecedented in my lifetime,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if I come to speak about philosophy or non-Jewish issues, the only safe place for me in the U.K. is a synagogue,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
L\u00e9vy 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.<\/p>\n
Mindful of the growing exodus of Jews from Western European cities, L\u00e9vy said he is determined to fight back.<\/p>\n
\u201cEurope would have no future if Jews stepped back,\u201d he said, blaming a toxic mix of \u201cstupid, illiterate, and barbaric anti-Semites\u201d and a French leadership whose stance on Israel often adds fuel to the fire.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe situation gives me the will to resist, to fight, and to win,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A staunch centrist of the old guard, L\u00e9vy 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a dark moment for Jews all over the world,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to be proud, strong and wise.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(July 9, 2026 \/ JNS) The diplomatic isolation of Israel during the war in Gaza following the Oct.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-533227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}