BAD JEW

A French Jewish journalist examines his uneasy relationship with Netanyahu-era Israel.

“Judaism and Zionism are no longer aligned. I don’t mean Zionism in the sense of a legitimate right to statehood, but its disfigurement by the aggressive agenda of Israel’s political Right.” So writes Smolar, a Middle East correspondent for Le Monde. As his subtitle suggests, Smolar’s family arrived in Paris following pogroms in Russia, but that did not diminish what he calls his family’s alternate religions: his grandfather’s communism, his father’s devotion to once-democratic Poland, his own commitment to journalism. His title is ironic, but not so far off the mark in the eyes of the conservative forces that have taken hold in Israel. The overarching mood there after Oct. 7, 2023, has been to destroy Hamas, which, Smolar argues, does nothing whatever to solve the problem of what to do with the Palestinian people once the smoke clears—if it ever clears, for current conditions in Gaza, he warns, “will combine to produce a new generation of Palestinians driven by hatred of Jews.” Smolar notes that mounting antisemitism in Europe and the U.S. complicate the possibilities of peace by contributing to Israel’s us-against-them siege mentality. He combines big-picture views with small, revealing scenes, as when he visits a once-illegal Jewish settlement on the West Bank, founded by religious extremists, that the Netanyahu government is now pressing to annex: “A project that was frankly marginal, eccentric, and inaudible ten or twenty years ago has been polished and normalized.” Against this, Smolar portrays peace activists, ethicists, and anti-Netanyahu activists who urge that Israel remember its leftist roots and truly live up to its self-proclaimed status as “the only democracy in the Middle East.”

Solid on-the-ground reporting combines with memoir to offer a revealing look at life in a deeply conflicted Israel.