{"id":49712,"date":"2017-01-21T17:05:54","date_gmt":"2017-01-21T15:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=49712"},"modified":"2017-01-18T14:22:02","modified_gmt":"2017-01-18T12:22:02","slug":"21-05-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=49712","title":{"rendered":"Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy: A calling to see – and write about – the truth"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy: A calling to see \u2014 and write about \u2014 the truth<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Jonathan Kirsch<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"PortraitPortrait of Bernard-Henri Levy.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The peripatetic philosopher Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy was en route from Iraq to his home in Paris when the Journal caught up with him by phone during a stopover in Morocco and spoke about a wide range of topics, from the election of Donald Trump to the successes of Zionism.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The author of the recently released \u201cThe Genius of Judaism\u201d has a conversational style that is somewhat less charged-up than his prose, but he displays the same command of history, politics and literature \u2014 and the same urgent moral concern \u2014 that characterize his published work.<\/span><\/p>\n

L\u00e9vy is now here in Los Angeles, where he will appear in conversation with Rabbi David Wolpe at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, 3663 Wilshire Blvd., at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 15. The free public event is co-sponsored by the Jerome N. Tober Fund in association with the United States Holocaust Museum and the USC Casden Institute. For more information, visit wbtla.org\/bhl.<\/span><\/p>\n

JONATHAN KIRSCH:<\/strong> Many of us over here in America are unsettled about the election of Donald Trump. Some of us are in despair. What is your view of the upcoming Trump presidency?<\/span><\/p>\n

BERNARD-HENRI L\u00c9VY:<\/strong> One has to be deeply concerned as an American but also as a Jew in America. The Trump campaign reopened the gates of an old-fashioned anti-Semitism, not only from the extreme right but even more so within the mainstream. And I feel that a paradoxical effect of the Trump victory is that it might give new leverage to leftist anti-Semitism. My fear today is that the Jews could be taken between the jaws of both rightist and leftist anti-Semitism. We have seen the same situation in France and in Europe. I pray [to] God that it does not happen in America, which has been, for so many decades, a safe haven for Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n

JK:<\/strong> In recent months and years, Americans have been more aware than usual about election results in Europe, including England, France, Austria and Hungary. We hear a lot about the resurgence of the far right in these countries. Do you share these anxieties?<\/span><\/p>\n

BHL:<\/strong> I am concerned about populism in general, which can be right-wing or left-wing. Populism is an idea that the people are an embodiment of the truth, and it expels from its body those regarded as marginal \u2014 it may be foreigners, it may be the so-called elites and it may be the Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n

JK:<\/strong> During the recent U.S. elections, much was said about whether or not to use the phrase \u201cradical Islamic terrorism.\u201d Donald Trump criticized President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for declining to even utter the phrase. As a man for whom language matters, what do you say about the debate over that phrase?<\/span><\/p>\n

BHL:<\/strong> You have to call evil by its name. Albert Camus said that when you don\u2019t call evil by its proper name, you increase the suffering in in the world. One of the ruses of the Devil is to disguise himself under a name that is not his own. \u201cRadical Islam\u201d means two things. One: This terrorism has something to do with Islam. Two: This Islam is not normal Islam, it is not mainstream Islam, but it is a special sort of Islam that is a caricature of Islam. If we say that the terror we have seen from Paris to Brussels to the United States has nothing to do with Islam, it is a fault: Obama is wrong when he declines to utter these words. But Trump is also wrong when he says Islam is radical in itself and that terrorism is always Islamic. Believers in democratic values have to be strong enough to navigate between these two points of view.<\/span><\/p>\n

JK:<\/strong> Israel in the \u201940s and \u201950s was widely seen around the world as an experiment that had succeeded. Nowadays, and regretfully, Israel is seen very differently. What do you see as the successes and failures of Zionism?<\/span><\/p>\n

BHL:<\/strong> If you take the big picture, and if you are honest, you cannot but admit that Zionism is a success. Look at the problem of multiethnicity, a problem on which we \u2014 Europeans and Americans \u2014 are breaking our teeth. Israel is a rare case of a multiethnic democracy that is working well. It\u2019s an old political question: How can you make a democracy when you start from ground zero? From Day One until today, Israelis have come from all over the world \u2014 including places where democratic values were defeated such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and the Muslim countries. But the social link, in Israel, is solid. One of the biggest challenges in a democracy is how it deals with war; we know it in France after Charlie Hebdo and you know it in America after 9\/11. Very often, democracies take some liberties with liberty in times of war. Israel has been at war since the birth of the state, and the democracy has prevailed.<\/span><\/p>\n

JK:<\/strong> Do you share the conventional wisdom in many circles that the two-state solution is a dead letter?<\/span><\/p>\n

BHL:<\/strong> I know the idea is weak today, but it is the only solution. I don\u2019t see what the alternative could be. I don\u2019t want Israel to be one state with two peoples. I don\u2019t want Israel to have a majority of non-Jewish citizens. And I don\u2019t want an apartheid regime. Without a two-state solution, the dream of [Theodor] Herzl will disappear. If someone knows another solution, I would be happy to know what it is.<\/span><\/p>\n

JK:<\/strong> Americans live in a culture of celebrity, but I cannot think of a philosopher who has achieved the fame that you enjoy in France. Even your most intimate, personal relationships are the subject of reporting, rumor and speculation. Does that detract from the seriousness of the message you seek to deliver to the world as a writer, a philosopher, a man of conscience?<\/span><\/p>\n

BHL:<\/strong> In a way, celebrity helps, and in another way, it overshadows the message. But I don\u2019t think too much about it. I think of doing my duty. I think of telling the truth. Today, I think of expressing my rage at what is happening in Aleppo \u2014 as a European, as a Westerner and as a Jew. Beyond that, whether my character and my personality helps me or blocks me in conveying the message, I cannot say and I don\u2019t care so much.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

twoje uwagi, linki, wlasne artykuly, lub wiadomosci przeslij do: webmaster@reunion68.com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy: A calling to see \u2014 and write about \u2014 the truth Jonathan Kirsch Portrait of Bernard-Henri Levy. The peripatetic philosopher Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy was en route from Iraq to his home in Paris when the Journal caught up with him by phone during a stopover in Morocco and spoke about a wide range of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49712"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49712"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49724,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49712\/revisions\/49724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}