My experience of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which has been ravaging minds for 75 years, has shown me, beyond the strictly political question, the psychotic core of this bloody relationship. It's this blind spot that I'd like to address here. In the history of peoples, as in that of individuals, there comes a time when recurrence of the same, but worsening, symptom demands, beyond the facts, an analysis that draws on the origins of the trauma. There's a world of difference between an introverted paranoiac who feels threatened and a paranoiac who kills.

This world has crossed a line since October 7, 2023. Every day since then has been a caricature of the day before: a delirium to which the mind becomes accustomed as if under the influence of a drug, as if it had nothing to say or nothing better to say. It's as if this deluge of fire were normal for the simple reason that it exists. We were in a neurotic situation; now, beyond all politics, we find ourselves on the edge of a generalized psychotic state. In neurosis, reality tests or exhausts its subject. In psychosis, the subject loses sight of it.

The place we call the Holy Land has become the focal point for an all-consuming, ontological fear: the fear of disappearing. Ancient Palestine, present-day Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and, above all, Jerusalem, are no longer spaces measured in square kilometers. They are no longer physical territories. They are the countries of a formless territory where, with unspeakable cruelty, defense of self is played out through elimination of the other. This comes at an inevitable cost to truth, and to the inevitable advantage of death. Lebanon is being absorbed by the hurricane. Everything is happening on the side of Israel's military might; as if destruction had the power to build, as if physical crushing were a reserve for the future. It's as if the fight against the unbearable side of memory were to be waged by reproducing it, not repairing it.

The cauldron of identity

With war underway, death overwhelms those who dole it out. From their point of view, it is supposed to cleanse and clear. It does the opposite: On the territory of burnt-out lives and buildings rise the untamed demons of hatred. Human intelligence is no longer able to respond, to maintain its reflexes. It hands over the reins to the temporary law of the strongest. From here we get this inconceivable global silence in the face of ongoing madness. The only reassuring exception at present is that the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu [Israel's prime minister], Yoav Gallant [former Israeli defense minister] and Mohammed Deif [head of the armed wing of Hamas]. Whether we're talking about political Islam or political Judaism, the phenomenon is one of perversion. It implies that self-recognition requires rejection of the other. In the case of political Islam, women are made hostages and freedom is sacrificed. In the case of political Judaism, the fate of the region and that of the world's Jews are mortgaged. In both cases, the disastrous absence of political solutions has broken the dikes of reason.

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