Episode Transcript
The ONLY Way to Defeat Hamas: Lessons From the Front Lines With French Writer Bernard-Henri Lévy
October 7th was the proof.
There was no longer in a safe heaven.
As a species, we seem to just do the worst job of learning from history.
Sometimes a evil is radical.
It is beyond excuse and beyond explanation, would it still be called Israel alone more than ever?
I know genocide of the past and I know the genocide of today.
I was there.
I saw.
Being Jewish.
That's about as goofy as I suspect we'll get today, but you never know if you couldn't guess by my elite and convincing accent.
My guest today joins us via the internet from France where he has been a fixture in public life for decades.
So much so that he's usually referred to only by his initials.
He's one of the world's foremost philosophers and journalists.
A wartime documentarian, an author of 48 books, and of course, a loud and proud Jew.
From Bosnia to Bangladesh, from Israel to Sudan, he has committed his life to following the outbreak of human tragedy wherever it rages, in order to bear witness, draw attention, and help the rest of us make sense of humanity's darkest and most resilient moments.
He's a moral compass, a relentless seeker of truth, and one of the most important public intellectuals of our age.
Please welcome BHL himself, Bernard-Henri Levy.
It's a pleasure to have you here on the show.
Thank you so much.
Let's get into your most recent book, Israel Alone, which you published last year, four months into a war that ended up being two years.
If you were going to release the book now.
Two years after the start of the war, instead of four months, would it still be called Israel alone?
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
More, more, more than ever.
Yeah.
I see the un, I see the, uh, the campuses in America.
I see the public opinion in France.
Uh, I see the calls for, for boycott, uh, of Israel, not of Netan of Israel.
When, uh, you have the.
Phil Philharmonic orchestra of, uh, of Israel that comes to Paris, uh, with a maestro who is an anti anti netan, uh, with, uh, players who are Jews and non-Jews.
And when you see that they are boycotted, that there is some incidents during the, the performance, uh.
So on.
It means that Israel has itself is even more alone today than, uh, than he was.
It was, uh, two, two years ago.
How do you account for something like, you know, the Iranian missile attacks on Israel?
When there was a, a, a wonderful coalition of other countries who stood up and, you know, sent military personnel and, and really spent money and, and people, and, and great capital to defend, Israel is the minimum holistic.
A country, a democratic country is attacked by, uh.
A flood of missiles, uh, probably have never been seen, uh, in such a short time.
Thank God the, the world came to rescue.
The world does not deserve for that, uh, medal.
Such a number of missiles in such a short time between two countries, Iran and Israel, who have no.
Territorial conflict.
Uh, the minimum was that the US, France, the neighboring Arab countries see that, uh, feel that it is, uh, themself was threatened behind Israel.
And, and, and help in your mind it was more out of self-interest if a few countries, of the few of the free world, and if some Arab countries had not reacted, it was a definitive triumph of the law of jungle.
It was a definitive, uh, blast, uh, breaking of the international law.
It was, uh, a world disorder at, uh, an unprecedented scale.
If you were to write the book now, two years after the fact, would there be anything different about it?
Stuff that you would want to discuss that you hadn't seen yet, or things that you got wrong, or would it be essentially the same book?
It would be essentially the same book.
Obviously a few things would've been different.
I would have added, uh, some pieces related to, to what happened since.
But the core of the book, the core of the book, I addressed the, the liberals and tried to tell them that far from being, uh, despised, uh, hated and, uh, attacked Israel should be praised.
According to the liberal values themselves, this are the core book.
It was not only, it was not just some tears, uh, about the loneliness of Israel.
It was some tears and the deep sorrow and mourning about.
The October 7th and the Deads.
But after that, the ideological core of the book was to explain, to demonstrate, to, to recall, to remind that Israel was born out an anti-colonial war.
I know by experience, uh, what apartheid is, you can say a lot of things about Israel.
You can be against, uh, the current government you have of course, but you cannot say that Israel itself.
Is, uh, practicing an apartheid.
So yeah, this would not have changed.
Something you got right in the book is your worry that Israel would not be allowed to definitively win the war.
That Hamas would be weakened but not defeated, which is essentially what has come to pass and what the situation is today.
What do you hope will happen from this point forward and what do you think will happen?
I hoped for two things.
When I wrote the book, one thing was the comeback of all stages.
This, for me was a, a sacred cause the hostage.
Came back, all the living and most of the deads.
But I had a second hope, which was very important too, which was the military defeat of Haas.
Because I know by the experience that when, uh, when you have in front of you Geist movement, the Geist organization, Janist Army, you cannot compromise as long as you compromise.
They pretend to be resistance as long as they pretend to be resisting resistance.
They have an aura, they have a great reputation.
They are popular, right?
And the only way to break this popularity is a military defeat.
I saw that.
In Afghanistan in 2001.
After September 11, I saw I was there on the ground.
I saw how Al-Qaeda was at the peak of his glory.
At the peak of its popularity was, uh, the balloon did, uh, blast because there was a military defeat.
I saw that in Mosul in 2016.
Uh, it was not Alga a, it was isis.
ISIS was at the peak of its, uh, again, reputation influence.
It did need immediately clear defeat, clear defeat for ISIS to lose a big part of it.
For Hamas Halas, it is the same if we don't want to see, for example, a poll, which I, a poll, which I saw yesterday about, uh, the West Bank and the influence of Hamas giving, uh, horrible numbers, uh, of popularity of Hamas on the West Bank.
If you don't want to see that, if you want this popularity to be, to be, to be broken, how much has to be defeated?
Will it happen?
Will the allies of Israel, uh, allow Israel or help Israel to achieve that target?
This, I don't know.
And I'm not sure that the current administration is feeling the things as I do the current Israeli administration, no, American man, American American and French.
There is this idea now that, uh, uh, the sort of compromise can be, can be made with the, the remnants of Hamas.
Uh, there is, uh, this idea that everybody has to save a face.
Including the, the godfather of Haas, like Qatar.
I'm not against the people saving face, but I am, uh, I am against Haas having such an influence in Jordan.
In the West Bank, in the Western Street, not only the a Arab Street people speak always about the Arab Street is also the western street where you have people hunting, uh, from the river to the sea.
All Palestine will be free and they will follow, be Israel and so on for them, for the Western Street.
Arab Street and so on.
Hamas has to be, has to be clearly defeated in a way or in another to admit his defeat, which happened with Al-Qaeda and which happened with with isis.
Again, I was in Mosul when the war, uh, against Isis finished.
It was clear there was a day, there was a week nearly overnight when the Geist, uh, cut their, uh, long beard and opened the hairdresser shop.
Bernard, this brings me to sort of a larger thematic question that it, it's gonna come up throughout this interview, but we just, as a species, as a global society, we seem to just do the worst job.
Of learning from history.
You're listing clear examples of very recent history where there is a formula that should be followed.
If you want to defeat Jihadism, you defeat it.
You, you kill.
Its popularity.
People don't want to join it anymore, and it does get weakened.
And yet for some reason, we have this.
You know, hubris or ignorance where we ignore it and we think, oh, well what I'm gonna do is gonna work instead.
What do you think that is about for us as a species that we almost refuse to look at even the most recent history and learn from its lessons?
There is two things.
First of all, history repeats itself.
People always say history does not repeat itself.
No, it repeats itself.
There are some lows of history.
There are some, uh, some chains of events which, uh, which happen, uh, nearly necessarily number one.
Number two, people are blind to that, don't want to see that for two reasons.
Number one, they are ignorant.
This is true.
I know a lot of people who decide in, in France and in America who really don't know history.
They don't care.
They are shortsighted.
And number two, uh, you have, uh, the people who decide have some difficulties to establish the priorities in the United States with all the respect they have for your country.
You have some people who are in charge who have two priorities.
Number one, I'm sure.
Uh, protect Israel, but number two, do good deals.
The second priority is to do good deals with some countries of the area, including some countries who, who support AMAs and who have some, uh, some conditions.
So they have to decide something.
You said in the book, Israel Alone, you said October 7th marks the alignment for the worse of Israel with the diaspora.
What did you mean by that?
And do you still feel that in the classical, um, view of things, you had diaspora, where Jews were prosecuted and Israel, which was a safe heaven for Jews?
October 7th was the proof that there was no longer a safe heaven.
It was the proof that there were no place in the world where the Jews could be.
Um.
It could be safe.
Uh, and in this sense, there was a sort of, uh, dia polarization of, uh, Israeli self.
This is what all the Jews in the world felt when the, when the sanctuary is, uh, attacked, burned, uh, when there is a real attempt to destroy it, what does it mean?
Yeah.
In the spirit of the people of my generation, there was the, the idea that, um.
Jews were threatened everywhere and that Israel could rescue them.
We had the feeling in the weeks following October 7th that we diaspora women and men could have to contribute to rescue Israel itself.
So it was a, a sort of reverse.
In the book, you have a chapter titled Radical Evil, where you essentially call out humanity for this delusion that we've progressed beyond evil.
Despite the myriad horrors that you yourself have seen up close that human beings are capable of doing to one another, how is it possible that after thousands of years of human beings lying, cheating, stealing, raping, killing each other, we continue this delusion that we're somehow.
Beyond that, that animalistic instinct.
The surprise is not that we continue, the surprise is that we continue to, to excuse.
Sometimes ail is radical, and when it is radical, it means that it is beyond excuse and beyond explanation, that there is a sort of, uh, black ar array.
Which is splashed by the event and which, um, should and has to block any sort of, um, explanation You have, you can explain a lot of things.
You can excuse a lot of things, but sometimes when you have events, which when you explain them, when you extr them.
You, you make the possibility, you open the possibility of of their comeback.
And October 7th, there is no excuse.
Soon after October 7th, I made the tour of American campuses.
The worst was people.
Ching, uh, uh, proma programs.
Okay.
This was the worst.
But something equality terrible was students or teachers explaining.
Said, you know, it did not ca it did not come out of a blue sky, um, uh, that it did not come in a void, in an emptiness.
Uh, before October, uh, October 7th, there was a, a, a long, uh, history of misery and of misery of the Palestinian people.
All of that is what happened was rooted in that this wa way of thinking was really.
The beginning of the worst of the re repetition of crime, of the, um, expression of the new antisemitism and so on.
At the end of the book, you conjure the, the classic biblical image of the golden calf.
You, you know, portray the Israelites saying, make us an idol that will spare us the effort of thinking about whom are you making that comparison today and, and what is their golden calf.
I think a minor part, but a part of the Israeli society itself you have today, uh, in Israel.
Uh, some people, I'm thinking of two ministers for example, of the government de, who really reflect in an undre way.
Mr.
Ridge.
Yeah.
Mr.
Bevi, they are thinking in a nationalist way.
They're thinking in an extra way.
They're thinking in a, in a racist, whatever, but it is not Jew.
They forgot, uh, what being a Jew means.
And, um, and Israel remains a, a, a special country.
When it can, uh, match the two being a normal country with, uh, of course with, uh, an army, a defense, some self-interest, national interest, and having some special values.
If you don't have the two, it's no longer reside.
It'll be a, I dunno, a canadaian country, it would be, uh, another Middle Eastern, eastern country.
It can be, uh, a lot of things, but Israel.
Means to remain faithful to some values which, uh, are inscribed in the, in the, in the, in the Jewish books.
You conclude the book continuing on with this theme by praying for the preservation of the Jewish soul, essentially, and, and concluding that it indeed has remained firm.
Um, do you feel.
Still, you know, a year change after writing this book, that it still remains firm and, uh, what puts it most at risk.
I went, um, to Israel various times since, uh, the book was written.
I went on Hostage Square, uh, a few times.
I had the honor to be invited to speak on post Stage Square.
I have the feeling of the pulse of the Israeli nation.
And for me, the core values, which I, which I allude to in this end of the book, are still more than ever vibrant and, uh, and, and blooming in the Israeli as.
And this, by the way, is one of the secular miracles of Israel.
This is one of the numerous reasons why I love Israel, is that.
In spite of the war, in spite of the suffering, in spite of the, of the state of emergency, in spite of everything, Israel continues to stand firm on.
Its, uh, feet, heart, and core.
And this is not so frequent.
You know, I'm speaking from a country in France.
We were in a state of war, uh, 50 years ago in Algeria after a few years.
We began to, to, to suppress the storm of our liberties freedoms and so on.
Freedom of associations, freedom of press, et cetera, et cetera, in America, after, uh, September 11, not a few years, a few months after September 11, you had patri attacks, pat, we had act one and then Patriot Act two again, state of war.
Means sort of state of emergency for the society itself.
Israel, what amazes me, what amazes me is that not after a few years, not after a few months, but after 76 years of state of war, honestly, the freedoms, the liberties, the civic rights, uh, remain untouched.
Even if you have a right wing government, it's not the matter.
Even the right wing government never deaded you.
You still have, uh, totally repressed, uh, you have the right to demonstrate.
You have the right to go.
The windows of the Prime Minister to shout and ask for his removal.
The rights of the Arab minority in Israel, thank God, have not been uh, intact.
They still are represented, and so, and this, this is for me is normal, but it is unprecedented.
Again in France, I can tell you if you have, if you have had at that time Agar war, some representative of the Arab minority going not, not even speaking of the parliament of our in the street.
They were, uh, strongly punished and, and once much more by the French police.
There is something which is uncomparable in Israel, which is nearly miraculous.
Whatever you think of a government or the, the pillars of the Israeli society.
Are not affected, are not corrupted by state of war.
There was an attempt before the war, right, with the judicial reforms, and you did go, it did not work.
By the way, yeah.
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Your critics would argue that you characterize Jews and Israel perhaps as morally superior or beyond reproach.
Uh, what would you say to them?
I don't think that, I think that, uh.
When you are faithful to enlightenment, you are superior to the same country who is not faithful to enlightenment.
Uh, Germany was superior, uh, at the time of the Weimar Republic or today than in the Nazi period is a fact.
Israel is a country, it is a fact where you have.
Uh, the inner age of the Enlightenment, the Western philosophy of enlightenment and, uh, the be the cream of the, of the Jewish books who still remain alive, who are still at the flame in the heart of a lot of people.
So the two make the great country, what can I say?
It's not superior by essence.
I really think that, uh, that, uh.
The Book of the Kings in the Torah is the great book, best, uh, teachings of what, what is a democracy, how, how power must be limited.
How, uh, kings are, uh, are weak.
There's a lot of teachings in the Book of Kings and the book of judges in the, in the Bible, which are so relevant for.
The spirit of, uh, liberal democracy today.
So a country who still have that in its, uh, structures.
Yeah, he's, uh, he's a little special for sure.
So I want to get to the, to talking about antisemitism.
And I wanna start by talking about the word itself.
I tend to not use that word I've actually spoken about on this show, how I dislike the use of the word I prefer to use.
The terms anti Jew bigotry or anti Jew hate or anti Jew racism.
Certainly when, when somebody says to me, you know, all you Zionists are Nazis and baby killers, it feels like bigotry to me.
But you've said antisemitism is not a form of racism because the racist hates me for being different, but the antisemite hates me for being the same.
And I'm wondering if you could break that idea down for us.
It's exactly what you, what, what you said.
A racist is, um, disgusted by the fact that, uh, the woman or the man he, he has in front of him is obviously different.
This makes him crazy, mad full of anger and hate another iit.
What makes him mad?
What makes him crazy is that.
The one he has in front of him is, uh, the same.
He cannot distinguish him.
There is no, no difference or the, if there is a difference, it is so, so, so little that it is invisible.
This is what makes the antisemite crazy.
You know, it is not the visibility of the difference.
It is the invisibility of difference.
Both are as horrible and must be combated, uh, with the same energy.
Uh, there was a newspaper in the French in France during the Nazi period, which was called I Am Everywhere.
The eye of IM were, were the Jews.
The Jews were accused to be everywhere because they are so different, so the same, so impossible to, to discern, to distinguish that they were suspected to be everywhere.
This is the real madness of antisemitism.
We also see, you know, just to push back on that a little, the Jews who are the most.
Visibly recognizable are the ones who are most commonly attacked and met with violence.
Not necessarily, not necessarily.
They are in France, for example, they are the most commonly attacked, uh, in the streets by, uh, by, by the mob.
Okay.
To see a Jew with Lin with a ki is an easy target.
But I'm not sure that this is the, the core of the rage.
If you really look at the calls for boycott, if you really look at the list in these days, there are some lists of Jews who have to be hated, boycotted, and so on.
They don't, they are not really religious Jews.
They are Jews who appear on tele, on popular shows on the television who sometimes don't appear who, who are anchor men or anchor women.
Uh, this really generates, uh, an incredible fire of hate.
The, the fact that they are, uh, French.
Like the French, uh, impossible to, to, to distinguish.
In 1982, you predicted that anti-Zionism would become this mass movement and become the face of antisemitism.
That's a long time ago.
What did you see then that you knew would end up, you know, paying the fruits today that it has?
I saw that all the other ways to be.
Antisemite were impossible to sell to a big audience.
If I dare say, in 1982, I, I, I saw that someone could not just come in the street and say, uh, I hate Jews, because they are, they have a special blood.
It was impossible to express.
Uh, it was more and more difficult, even impossible to say, I hate the Jews because they killed the Christ.
Jesus Christ.
Impossible.
But to say I hate Jews because they are associates.
Because they are partners with a state which we hate as itself, which is Israel.
This was easy to do, easy to say, easy to sell.
43 years ago, I saw the first crowds gathering.
With good faith, with good consciousness without the feeling of committing a crime, full gathering around this idea.
Going more into that, in, in your book, genius of Judaism, you say The antisemite is someone who has always managed to make it appear as if the hate he feels for the Jews is no more than the reflection of the love he feels for others.
You know, I don't hate Jews.
I just love Jesus.
Who the Jews killed, or the Aryan race that they've defiled, or the Palestinian people that they have oppressed.
It's so clear that that technique that's being used, I mean, it's just so obvious when you look at it.
How can you explain that?
That people have not caught onto this writ large across the world?
I dunno.
I dunno why, but, but it, it, it's a fact in the history of mankind, uh, hate is a, a big passion as Sigmund Freud said in one of his last books.
Hate is the more solid cement.
More solid concrete than love, aas.
That's a law of mankind.
You build solid communities in general, more with hate than with love number one.
But number two, for the hate to work and to be a solid concrete, it has to disguise in love.
It has to take the mask of love, uh, why people don't, uh, admit these, these two laws.
I don't know because there is a, uh, uh, a will not to see, a will, not to a will to be blind.
As you've pointed out in this conversation, and as you also discuss in the book, anti-Zionism is today sort of the acceptable vehicle, the only acceptable vehicle for anti-Semitism today.
Whether you have the right to be anti-Zionist or not is not really the question.
It seems that these folks have found a way around.
The, uh, you know, they say don't confuse criticism of the government with antisemitism, which sounds fair, but then the criticism will be Israel or our genocidal baby killers, as if you know, that's the legitimate criticism.
I, is there a way out of this one?
Like, how do we, how do we break that logic of, well, criticism is fair when the criticism is blood libel as you just expressed it.
Say it again and again.
Of course you have the right to criticize the government of Israel as any government of any democracy, and as Israelis do it themselves, and this is the principle of a democracy, and Israel did that since his birth, since its inception.
Israelis themselves criticize government and then debate another what and so on to be anti-Zionist.
To declare illegitimate the very principle which made Israel to exist.
I'm sorry, but it's not, it's not auto right for me.
This is the criminal thought, anti-Zionism.
It is a call for crime.
Of course, you can be against, uh, Donald Trump or you can be against Emmanuel Macon.
Okay?
But nobody would ever think.
To, to break America into pieces or to, to, to, to, to give parts of France to other, you know, it's unthinkable for any country, and it is what anti Israelism is, anti Zionism is because I don't like the current government.
I think that the state itself is illegitimate.
Uh, to declare state legitimate means a clear call for its annihilation.
Yeah.
Those who are anti-Zionists, they are clearly calling for the eradication of, uh.
States, member of the, the Community of Nations, member of the un, they're clearly calling for an, the eradication of, uh, uh, uh, numerous people.
Uh, majority of them being Jews, 80% being Jews, 20% being corrupt, by the way.
And if you Jews, it's calling for the eradication of all of that.
So it's calling for crime.
You cannot be anti-Zionism.
anti-Zionist with innocence.
No.
It's so easy to see the, the, the line is so easy to draw between, uh, the critic of the government and the, and the blood liability.
It's so easy.
Genocide, for example, I spent my life studying genocide.
I know what the genocide is, how it proceeds, what are the laws, what it smells.
I know the genocide of the past and I know the genocide of today.
Rwanda, I was there.
I saw, and I can tell you in Sudan, ur, or in Rwanda?
Yeah.
You had no cease fire.
You had no corridors of evacuation, you had no warning, uh, before, uh, the, the, the killing with machete or, or, or whatever.
You had no warning.
So you can say that it is not alive for a Palestinian family to go from in the corridor of evacuation from north to south and then from south to north.
I agree.
I would not live that life or anything, but you cannot say it is a, it is a genocide.
You can say it is, it is.
It is a, a terrible life.
You can say it is unfair.
You can say that innocent people don't deserve to pay for their, the criminal government.
Okay.
But you cannot say that when you propose to a family to evacuate in a corridor protected by IDF, you cannot say that it is, uh, a genocide.
Yeah.
As we discussed earlier, you sort of identified the way to, to break up.
The aura of a jihadist group, like there is a formula for that.
There have been other vehicles of antisemitism that have been broken up and fallen out of favor over time, whether it's the racial idea or the Christ killer idea.
How do we one day break this vehicle of anti-Zionism being a legitimate, uh, cause for anti-Semitism by having the world, uh.
Admitting and loving Israel, which is possible.
Look at the Abraham agreements, Abraham Accord, right?
Really, 20 years ago, I would not have imagined such thing as the Abraham agreements.
When I went in Israel, first time in my life in uh uh, the last day of the war of six days in 1967, I would not have imagined Egypt first Jordan.
And the countries of Abraham agreements making peace, uh, I would not have imagined the, the peace and the agreement turning into a beginning of real knowledge of each other and after knowledge, love.
So this is possible.
Story is not, this is my main, um, philosophical disagreements with inheritors of the dinky Zionism.
I am not pessimistic as they are.
You know, the, the Israel right wing is, uh, uh, grounded in the idea that whatever there is no solution, Israel will be forever hated Israel.
Just have to become a fortress and to defend itself forever against the hate, which will never stop.
I, I agree with the first part.
We have to be, Israel has to be a fortress.
Israel has to be strong.
Israel has to have a strong army.
And then of course, but I'm, I don't agree with the second part.
We can imagine, and I can imagine that I long for a world who will admit at the end of the day that Israel the chance.
For the area that Israel is the lucky card for the world.
That the world without Israel or the area, an area without Israel would be in much, uh, worse state than with it.
Alright folks, at this point in the episode, we would usually go over to our five deep questions, which is just for folks in the Kehillah, our subscriber only community, which you can join at beingjewishpodcast.com/community.
Today's are gonna be a little bit different.
It's still gonna be just for the Kehillah, but we're gonna do five deep questions with Bernard-Hernri Levy.
About France and Ukraine.
So if you want to hear that, make sure you hop on over.
You wrote an article just last month about the war in Sudan, where you were on the ground speaking with a lot of the major players, seeing for yourself up close and personal.
What's going on there?
I read the whole article.
I've read what Chachi PT has said about it.
I've read what the Sudanese military said about it through your article.
It's still.
Pretty difficult to wrap my head around, honestly.
What would you say this war is really about?
It's a genocide, by the way, in Fu It is a genocide.
It is a, a massive hunger.
Famine.
Yeah, it is a racist war, a racist war, a war between Sudanese of Arab origin against Sudanese of, uh, African origin or perceived as such.
Above all that.
You have certainly some interests and some, uh, foreign powers who are pushing their agenda.
I would like if it were only interest because interest can be sold, it can be unmasked.
And when it is unmasked, it is easy to to to stop.
So there is a will to kill a will of extermination, a will of, um, any alienation of, uh, of a whole population, which, uh, which is at the core of the matter.
So it's not a power struggle as you see it between two factions.
It's really a racist genocide from one side to the other.
I, I think so the easy way to consider the story, but it's also the lazy way, is to send back to back the two camps.
But it's too, too easy and too lazy and it, uh, it will not solve the problem.
No, no, I don't think so.
Okay.
My last question for you and then we'll let you go.
You said that October 7th opened a Pandora's box freeing the most antisemitic people to spew their anti-Jewish hate.
I think we'll have a hard time getting the devil back in the box, but we must fight it.
How do we fight it?
Bernard, doing what you do, uh, every week or, or so?
Doing what I try to do myself, speaking loud and clear and fighting.
You know, uh, we have to, in front of antisemitism, the first duty is not to let it pass.
Not to admit, not to admit it is a fatality, not to say, okay, we, we bow the head and we let it pass.
No, we have to, each time we are witness of an act or uh, a thought of antisemitism, it has to be denounced clearly.
And, uh, and one day the wave will turn.
The Jews will have, uh, more friends than enemies.
It, it's like a battle.
It's like a war.
It'll never be won totally.
Uh, antisemitism will not be eradicated from the surface of the Earth.
No.
Sure.
But it can be contained, it can be shamed, it can be, uh, reduced to its disgusting face.
There, there is.
You have a lot of decent people in America and in France who, who are ready to, to see this disgusting face of antisemitism.
If it is shown properly and this is what has to be done.
Well, we're certainly in alignment on that.
Bernard, thank you so much for your time.
It's really been a pleasure and please stay safe wherever you go and keep doing what you do.
Thank you.
Merci Beaucoup a BHL for joining me from thousands of miles away.
And if you all wanna start calling me JSP, that's totally cool with me.
And remember, if you want to hear today's five deep questions about France and Ukraine with Bernard-Henri Levy, and support my work here on the show, head over to being Jewish podcast.com/community and sign up for the Kehillah.
I'd love to have you.
Alright, I'll see y'all back here for the next episode, Magna of being Jewish with me.
Jonah Platt.