Europe's Jewish Problem

In this book Shmuel Trigano, who teaches at the University of Paris X-Nanterre and is chairman of the Observatoire du Monde juif (an institute for research on anti-Semitism), has analyzed anti Semitism's contemporary manifestations. Trigano highlights a paradox: on the one hand, the memory of the Holocaust is exalted; on the other, the Jewish state is accused of Nazism and delegitimated. Regarding the Holocaust, Europe recognizes the victims in the abstract, their Jewishness being suppressed. This, Trigano maintains, removes the genocide of the Jews from human history?leading, in turn, to a shift in terms of reference. Whereas Europeans are prepared to recognize Jews as victims, in the Israeli case they encounter the reality of soldiers. Hence, Trigano asserts, Jews are condemned either to be victims or, if Diaspora Jews or Israelis side with Sharon, to fall into the category of Nazis. The discourse on the Holocaust has, therefore, distorted the relationship between Israel and the international community while also influencing the Israeli elite, which tends to reject such an identification with the government of the ostracized state. In this sense, the obligation of history condemns the Jews to be prisoners of Auschwitz forever.