I was delighted to hear the news of the ceasefire agreement in Gaza and the liberation of the Israeli hostages. However, my joy is mixed with a very different emotion. This has all come very late, far too late: So much suffering and death could have been avoided! Even if this ceasefire were to finally lead to a lasting peace, how can we forget that, for over a year, [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and his army starved and massacred civilian populations? That they have destroyed the majority of Gaza's homes, hospitals and schools; and that the most extremist members of his government are still planning to recolonize the territory and expel its inhabitants?

In so doing, the Israeli right and far right have taken all Jews hostage, both those in Israel and the diaspora. They have made them into accomplices to their crimes, and they have done so in the name of the Jewish people – in other words, "in my name." For the first time in my life, I feel ashamed of being Jewish. Yet this is not the shame of yesteryear, the shame of those who had been insulted, humiliated and herded into ghettos: It's a new kind of shame, one that is unusual in the long history of our people, that of being an accomplice to carnage.

The son of Holocaust survivors, I was born and have lived peacefully in France, where I have never been the target of – or even a direct witness to – an anti-Semitic act or remark. The disaster that wiped out so many of my people has benefited me: It has gifted me a robust good conscience. It has given me the certainty that I was always on the right side, on the side of history's victims, of those who have been wronged – and this has prevented me from seeing another wrong, one to which I was an unwilling accomplice.

Out of the unspeakable horror of the Holocaust came the State of Israel, a refuge for all persecuted Jews. For survivors like my parents, this meant that, perhaps, the horror would never happen again. Thus, Israel's existence was a blessing, and every one of its actions was blessed. It meant that we didn't have to question the injustices that had preceded and followed on from its birth.

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