Dear friends. First of all, it’s a joy to be here. Because I love Jerusalem. Because Israel is not reducible to Netanyahu and the war.
And because I feel such a wind of hatred blowing against this country that I’m glad to have come to this gathering of writers to reaffirm, in memory of my friends Amos Oz, Aharon Appelfeld, and A.B. Yehoshua, my principled solidarity with the State of the Jews.
I showed my solidarity the day after October 7, traveling immediately, on the 8th, to the cities and then the kibbutzim devastated in the south of the country.
And I’ve done it since, whenever I could—even for the recent March 26 conference on antisemitism, which I would have gladly opened had the organizers not announced, at the very last moment, that they were honoring figures of a European far-right recently converted to a love of Israel—people I oppose in my own country.
And I affirm my solidarity again today, with even more emotion, as Israel’s enemies rage with cruel delight and as its traditional allies abandon or threaten to abandon it: condemnations, threats of sanctions, a creeping boycott of its writers and artists—even Donald Trump, who seems ready to sell you out if that’s the cost of a deal—all of this is happening, and it’s a sad spectacle.
Why should we care about Israel?
2. So, I’m here if only to remind you that you, women and men of letters and culture, are not as alone as it may seem.
And I think it’s a good thing that someone came here tonight, at the opening of this festival, to say the following.
I care for Israel because it is a tiny, infinitely fragile country threatened on all sides.
I love and respect Israel because it was born of that magnificent event, three-quarters of a century ago: a war of liberation that was doubly victorious - against a traditional empire (the British) and against a diabolical one (Hitler’s Reich).
I feel pain for Israel because this small country is a great democracy that has managed the feat of living for 75 years in a state of existential war without falling into the trap of permanent emergency rule.
I defend Israel because it is a democracy not only uncompromising but exemplary—where 20% of its citizens are Palestinians, sometimes anti-Zionist, but fully participate in the political life of the country: Who, among those who lecture you daily and themselves face the challenges of multiethnic society, can claim, as Israel can, three Arab parties with real weight in its parliament?
And I defend Israel because it is the only place on earth where the world’s oldest persecuted people knows it will find refuge if the dark times return and if the murderous rage that has pursued them—from Babylonia to the Roman Empire, from old Russia to France, from modern exterminating Europe to the anti-Jewish Middle East—becomes relevant once again.
That needed to be said. It is said.
3. Now, the question is whether someone like me, a defender of Israel, is allowed to criticize Israel when it deserves it.
Elie Wiesel and Emmanuel Levinas thought not: They believed Jews who do not share in the risks of the Zionist venture have a duty to remain silent.
And so too think those who today, in France, reproach Delphine Horvilleur, Johann Sfar, Marc Knobel, or my friend Anne Sinclair for speaking out about their unease over the renewed bombings in Gaza.
I do not share that view.
I do believe, yes, that it’s always better, when possible, to express criticism from within Israel.
But I see no principled reason why a Jewish friend—or even a non-Jewish one—cannot question Israeli policy: Not the fear of “disheartening the base,” which did so much damage to progressive European intellectuals in the past; not the fear of giving ammunition to enemies, who—as Jean-Claude Milner said in his recent exchange with Iranian intellectual Anoush Ganjipour ("Parler sans détours", Le Cerf)—never lack it anyway; and not, again, a feeling of guilt for not sharing the daily anguish and fight for safety and life of Israelis.
That has always been my reasoning. Always.
I’ve never said: “I can no longer stay silent; I have until now, but this is too much.”
Because I have never stayed silent. Not in Israel Alone, where a chapter was devoted to the unbearable images of Palestinian civilian victims. Not in Nuit Blanche, where the faces of innocent children killed in the bombings of Khan Younis or Rafah literally keep me awake. Not in Hostage Square, in Tel Aviv, where I proudly declared almost a year ago that the redemption of captives has been, since Maimonides, a sacred priority for every Jewish conscience—especially those leading the country.
Nor, for that matter, in earlier wars fought by Israel or in my dealings with its prime ministers—Begin, Shamir, Sharon, Rabin—whose errors I’ve never hesitated to denounce.
It is in that same spirit that I’ve come to speak to you today.
You are going to hear my unease, my criticisms, and my fraternal recommendations.
4. It is monstrous to suggest, for example, as two far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s government have done, that there are no “innocent civilians” in Gaza.
It is contrary to Jewish ethics—and, of course, to the laws of war—to block humanitarian aid at Israeli crossing points: I welcome the fact that aid resumed this morning after six weeks of suspension; I truly welcome the victory of those in this country who say: “Come what may—and especially against the will of Hamas, which never weeps over its people’s suffering and deaths—it is our duty to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and help the wounded who are on the verge of collapse.”
It is to Israel’s honor that, at least during the first year of the war, it did what was militarily possible to spare non-combatants: Disastrous is the temptation, now seen in some quarters, to abandon that scruple and toss aside the ethical code of the Israeli army.
That the two-state solution, which I have supported my entire life, is no longer realistic so long as Palestinians persist in the idea that the eradication of all Jewish life between the sea and the Jordan is not only desirable but achievable—I have said this from the very beginning. But it is a grave political mistake, and a betrayal of the future, to simultaneously expand Jewish settlements on the West Bank to such a degree that the situation becomes irreversible and the two-state solution definitively impossible.
And even if, indeed, the idea of having, at your borders, people who applauded the October 7 massacre—and who in some cases dream of repeating it on an even larger scale—is a nightmare for you, Israelis, never can a Jewish army assist in a forced population transfer of the kind that the American administration seems to be entertaining: Those who imagine this are dangerously mistaken, for it would deeply shake the entire foundation of Jewish ethics, its most sacred and recurrent commandments, the very humanism of the “other” reimagined by modern Jewish thought—and perhaps irreversibly so.
All this is complicated, I know. It is, in many ways, tragic.
And dizzying is the notion that, one day, one might have to choose, in this country, between the defense of borders and fidelity to values.
But this is not the first tragic dilemma in which the people of sorrow and hope have found themselves.
And I believe in the mental and moral resources that will, as always, allow Israel to loosen the stranglehold, resist the lure of reckless escalation, and overcome this ordeal.5. One final idea. Surely, there are others.
But I offer this one, because it is concrete and because I discussed it this morning with President Isaac Herzog.
The fact is that the IDF has achieved significant victories over the past eighteen months—bitter victories, yes; at the cost of too many deaths, both Palestinian and Israeli; but significant nonetheless: the near-destruction of Hezbollah… the weakening of Iran… and, against all odds, the preservation of that precious achievement—the Abraham Accords.
And the fact is that the final major challenge still facing Israel is that of Hamas: not so much its military power, which has also been greatly reduced by the deaths of its key commanders and the destruction of much of its arsenal, but the aura it enjoys in the rest of Palestine and, beyond, in the Arab-Muslim world. Its “resilience” in the face of Israel is, and will remain, in the years ahead, its most dangerous weapon—especially if a “compromise” were reached and it were allowed to remain in power.
To win this final battle, there are two possible paths.
One is the purely military route: to eliminate, one by one, all its remaining leaders—a path which is not, in theory, completely unworkable, since that’s exactly what the American, French, Kurdish, and Arab allies of the anti-ISIS coalition achieved not so long ago in Raqqa and Mosul. But I doubt that Israel, more isolated than ever, urged morning and night to implement an unconditional ceasefire, and vilified from all sides, can follow that path alone.
Then there is a second route—one that, though it may not annihilate the enemy, would force it to surrender, lay down its arms, and, like the PLO under Yasser Arafat, which left Lebanon in shame by boat for Tunisia, be exiled, without glory. Such a spectacle would do much to dispel the dark aura that Hamas holds, not only over the Arab street, but even over segments of Western public opinion, because of its pose as the eternal “front of resistance.”
To make that happen, Israelis who think in terms of vengeance must be convinced.
And—more difficult still—the doubts must be overcome of those who, not without reason, believe that justice would be lacking: justice owed to the dead, the maimed, the women raped on October 7, and to the hostages who will never return alive.
But still… the return of the remaining hostages in exchange for surrender and the departure of their torturers into the wilderness…
Homecoming for some—and, for others, the loss of that dreadful prestige they draw only from their supposed invincibility against Israel…
Wouldn’t that be worth it?
The rescue of captives, the end of combat, and the intolerable harm done to innocents, and a crushing blow to an organization whose wretched credit comes solely from “resisting” the IDF—isn’t that worth postponing justice?
I think it is.
6. The greatest difficulty, of course, is forcing the hand of those whose entire existence is devoted to death-the death of Palestinian civilians whom they too hold hostage, and perhaps their own.
But there is a way: through the states that have, before and after October 7, more or less sponsored them—Qatar, Turkey, Iran, of course, even Egypt—and which, as we know, still hold sway over them (and, incidentally, have exile destinations to offer).
And there is a way to activate this leverage: to convince that part of the world that still listens to Israel, and to ensure that international pressure is finally applied, not on Israel, but on them, the sponsors of death. And to be sure that, through them, pressure will be applied on those agents of death who survive only through their support and sponsorship (and, let us admit, also through the blindness of a world that insists on equating a terrorist Islamist organization with the army of a nation which, for all its leadership’s faults, remains a great democratic state!).
The task is not simple.
Some will say it is impossible, so deaf have become the international community—and even Israel’s friends—to its cause and its arguments.
But we must try.
We can argue, explain, and if necessary, teach.
To me, the most inconceivable, the saddest, the most ruinous course would be to despair: first, of the future; second, of peace—even a distant one, like a horizon; and third, of the power of speech—speech whose language is more familiar to the Jewish soul than any other, and which it would be tragic to abandon, leaving the final word to the dreadful images we receive morning and night.
May, in Jerusalem, the will to convince come to the aid of the will to prevail.
May, in the Jewish world, Ulysses come to the rescue of Achilles—or, better yet, Solomon to Gideon.
And how beautiful it would be if, like Jacob who, facing Esau and his 400 warriors, did not hesitate to feign, to scheme, to rely on emissaries who were more or less angelic—that is, more or less dubious and duplicitous—Israel’s leaders would reinvent, in Washington or Doha, before their true and false brothers, a subtle combination of warrior firmness and ingenious diplomacy to impose this simple message:
“Enough. Too much pain. Too much death. Hamas must lay down its arms and leave Gaza now.”
I believe, of course, in Jewish strength.
I believe in that strength whose terrible necessity was shown to me by Albert Cohen, Romain Gary, and later, Claude Lanzmann.
But like them, I know that the truest strength remains that of spirit, of moderation, of culture and, I repeat, of living, persuasive, inventive speech—the kind that finds a way when the world itself seems a trap, and which led our sages to say: “For a Jew, the wise man is greater than the prophet.”
Bernard-Henri Lévy is a philosopher, activist, filmmaker, and author of more than 48 books, including The Genius of Judaism, American Vertigo, Barbarism with a Human Face, Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, and The Empire and the Five Kings. His latest book is Israel Alone.
This text originally appeared as the opening speech at the International Writers Festival in Jerusalem, May 19, 2025