Almost half a century ago, Bernard-Henri Lévy warned that antizionism would become the vehicle for a new wave of hate.
It was 1981, and the philosopher was already one of France’s most prominent public intellectuals, when, in his book L’Idéologie française (The French Ideology), he argued that antisemitism remained a “living ghost” in France and Europe, ready to re-emerge in a new guise.
Yet even Lévy was unprepared for the speed with which so much of the Western world turned against Israel in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacre.
Speaking as his new book, Mémoires provisoires (Provisional Memoirs) looks back over his career battling extremism, Lévy recalls arriving in Israel shortly after the Hamas atrocities, finding a country still reeling from the slaughter, its army yet to launch its major military response.
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