Is there a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? World-renowned French Jewish intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy believes that not only does one exist, but that it will be implemented in his lifetime.
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"What gives me hope is the Abraham Accords," he told Israel Hayom. "This is such a secular miracle, it was an unexpected achievement that made it seem that everything is possible.
"Even three years ago, nobody would've bet on something like the Abraham Accords happening. Thanks to a small group of men of goodwill and true vision in Israel, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates, this became a reality. Sometimes the biggest thunderstorms that make our history are due to a handful of women and men.
"I hope the same will happen between Israel and the Palestinians. One day we will be taken by surprise to discover that a few Israelis, Palestinians, Americans, and French people found a solution. Remember what I tell you, for I believe it may happen one day".
Lévy, 73, is a journalist, philosopher, filmmaker, lecturer, and former war correspondent who was a leading member of the Nouveaux Philosophes (New Philosophers) movement in France in 1976.
He has visited Israel on many occasions and spoke fondly of time spent there.
"Every time I come to Jerusalem, I feel inspired. I feel moved to the bottom of my soul. I am intellectually and spiritually well when I am there. I like every piece of land and every piece of the sky in Israel. I love every grain of sand in the desert, and the road that led me 54 years ago to the house of [former Prime Minister] David Ben Gurion in the Negev. I love the lake of Tiberias; I love to be in Safed. I feel at home everywhere in Israel.
"All my life I've witnessed the struggles of Israel for its existence. My friends there have sometimes asked me what I thought and even when they didn't, I would say and write it. At its core, Israel is one of my key concerns.
"We share the same age, and my life has been intermingled with the life of Israel. I've met so many prime ministers, from Menachem Begin to Yitzhak Shamir, Ehud Barak, and Benjamin Netanyahu.
"I knew them all. Shimon Peres was my very dear friend. I was very close to him, we first met at the end of the 1960s or maybe the early 1970s, he was always a mentor to me. Today I feel close to your new president, Isaac Herzog. I was very happy when the Knesset elected him. I feel like he and I are on the same page."
Q: What do you think about our new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett?
"I think it's a good change, I was in favor of this. I don't dismiss Netanyahu's achievements, but I was happy to see the change. In my opinion, Bennett's coalition is yet more proof of the solidity and vibrancy of Israel's democracy. Israel is a model of democracy."
Lévy is slated to arrive in Jerusalem at the end of the week. He will be the guest of honor at the annual Jerusalem Film Festival, where he will also present his documentary The Will to See: Dispatches from a World of Misery and Hope. The film will be screened in English at the Jerusalem Cinematheque on Nov. 28 at 8 p.m.
The piece covers wars and humanitarian crises in such high-conflict locations as Somalia, Ukraine, Kurdistan, and others. The documentary is based on Lévy's book of the same name. Work on the project began on the eve of the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
"I risked my life, and the life of my team, for an entire year to make this film and to be a witness for the dangers of humanity. Petty politics are insignificant to me," Lévy said.
Q: What is your impression of the direction in which humanity is headed?
"I'm not optimistic, because America is going backward so quickly. What happened in Afghanistan, in Somalia, in most of the parts of the world where I was, with the hatred and the vitriol of the West, makes me unhappy and sometimes hopeless.
"When I was young, the West seemed to be more in line with its values. During the Cold War, for example, there was a creed in parts of the Western population, a creed in our own values. This creed seems to have diminished now.
"The West gave the world the worst and the best inventions. It created Stalinism and Communism but also created the cures for these diseases. The West invented modern racism, but there were also Westerners who initiated the fight against it. This is also the European culture, which creates ideas, but is also capable of self-criticism."
Q: A recurring theme of your documentary is poverty and war.
"The two are completely interconnected. War creates poverty, poverty creates war. My entire life I've witnessed the connection between them. Somalia, for example, which Western media has barely bothered to reach in the past 20 years. It's like the chicken and the egg, does poverty come before war or war before poverty?"
Q: Perhaps there is an economic solution to this?
"Even if the biggest billionaires decided to donate huge sums to cure hunger in third world countries, I'm not sure that would end war completely. This, of course, is a dream-like scenario. Perhaps, we can get rid of poverty, but human beings have a lot of extreme violence towards another, which is something illogical, rooted in the deep mysterious parts of the human psyche, that precede civil prosperity and financial motives."
Q: Some say war is a lucrative business.
"I don't know if anyone profits from war. Perhaps a few arms dealers. I don't see how anyone can become richer in a social disaster. In the long run, it makes everyone poorer.
"I'm of the opinion that peace is the best way to make the world prosperous. Peace agreements, conflict resolution, real exchanges between people – for me this is the best way to enrich people, help the poor, raise the middle class, everyone.
"In the 20th century in Europe, wars were times of immense misery. So no, I don't think that there are those who benefit. War is bad for everyone.
"I know well what war is, I've seen a lot of them. In the Middle East, in South Africa. I traveled to Colombia during the war on the Falkland Islands in 1982 and to Asia during the Liberation Tigers of Tamil in Sri Lanka. Every time I saw war, I saw poverty. It is never a way to get rich."
Q: Two weeks ago, Scotland hosted a global climate event. Is climate change rightfully a key concern for humankind?
"As a therian, I'm not sure that there is one solution to the matter. But in my opinion, genocide is the worst thing. Genocide against Armenians, genocide in Darfur [in Sudan], genocide in Rwanda, of course, genocide against Jews during the Holocaust, genocide against Nigerian Christians in Nigeria today, genocide is really the worst of the worst.
"And I am very concerned about climate change. I am a good militant of ecology. I think that the world should immobilize in favor of stopping climate change at all costs. But I would be very concerned that those preoccupations could overshadow the misery, the crime, the massacres, and sometimes genocides, which have nothing to do with climate change.
"So, we have to think about all of these at the same time, climate change and warmongers and massacres. We have to do both and be very careful that one concern does not overshadow the other.
"The COVID crisis was another revelation of this huge inequality between people. That the biggest injustice is to be born in one place instead of another. If you are born in the south of the globe, in a place where climate change is on the rage, your chances to survive are close to zero. This is terrible and COVID has highlighted that.
"When I began editing the movie, I had an idea to ask big vaccine laboratories to donate doses to countries which are mentioned in this film, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Bangladesh, etc. It didn't work, but the idea is still there.
"I am a strong advocate of vaccine distribution in all of these countries. And I would be very happy if someone, a big laboratory, for example, took the initiative. I would be very happy to help, to share the access that I have in these countries at least, to contribute.
"I would be very happy to do that because it is an obscenity seeing France or America advising the third vaccine shot knowing that in Nigeria, they still haven't had the first one. It's an obscenity."
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Lévy was born in Algeria in May 1948, nine days before the establishment of the State of Israel. His parents, Andre and Dina Lévy moved to France shortly after his birth. Lévy's father founded a successful timber company, which he bequeathed to his son after his death in 1995. Lévy sold it two years later for an estimated value of $750 million.
Growing up, he attended the prestigious Lycee Louis-le-Grand school in Paris, whose graduates include writer Voltaire, novelist Victor Hugo, and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Lévy received a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the Ecole Normale Superieure.
In 1971, he became a war correspondent covering the Bangladesh Liberation War against Pakistan. His experience in the South Asian country was the source of his first book, Bangla Desh: nationalisme dans la révolution (Bangladesh: Nationalism in the Revolution).
"French novelist Andre Malraux, whom I admired, said in an interview in 1971 that what was happening in Bangladesh was terrible, and that a genocide was taking place 26 years after World War II. Malraux and I drove to Bangladesh, even though he was already in his 70s. He was a great humanitarian activist who risked his life for the values in which he believed," Lévy said.
Over the years, Lévy received honorary doctorates from Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Bar-Ilan University. He considers himself a fighter for Israel and a harsh critic of Europe's discriminatory treatment of Israel and the Jews. He has previously argued that it stems from the guilt Europeans carry after the Holocaust.
As an ardent Zionist, he was one of the first to warn against the resurfacing of antisemitism in Europe in the early 2000s, as well as the danger of radical Islam.
"I am probably one of the only French men to first underline extreme Islamism as one of the most radical dangers of our time. I devoted a book to it in 1994. For almost 30 years I have tried to sound the alarm, to alert and do my job as an intellectual whistleblower about the huge danger of radical Islamism to democracy, to civilization, and to the world. For me, it's nothing new."
Q: What is your opinion of left-wing French Jewish journalist Eric Zemmour, whose remarks about Arabs and Blacks have more than once stirred controversy?
"I think Zemmour is just a bubble, he won't last long. The whole thing is a ploy to attract attention and it will soon deflate. I am sure of one thing – he's doing a very dirty job.
"Firstly, he encourages a lot of antisemitism by rehabilitating the Vichy regime, by casting doubt on the innocence of Alfred Dreyfus, and by questioning the Sandler family's loyalty to France, the relatives of the victims murdered by the terrorist Mohammed Merah in Toulouse [in 2012].
"Secondly, the creed of Zemmour is that it's impossible to be a loyal French citizen and a committed Jew at the same time. For him, one can only be French and must get rid of one's Jewishness. His message is to send the Jews back to the reality of the 1930s when one was only allowed to be Jewish in a minimal and sort of secretive way. For me, as a French Jew, I demand to be allowed to be proud of my Jewishness and of the State of Israel without having my loyalty to France questioned."
Q: What state do you think the Jewish world is in now?
"Thank God, there are many Jews in places like France, America and South Africa, who are loyal citizens to their countries, and who are committed Jews. This is still new, it was difficult before WWII, and not very easy during the 19th century. But today, the Jews in the Diaspora have achieved their religious rights. Of course, there is a rise in antisemitism, but you also see new strength and Jewish pride that grasped the right to be strongly Jewish, as I am. And also, to be loyal to their countries. This is progress."
Q: In your documentary, you can be seen speaking to Kurds who fight against the Islamic State, and you tell them that you are Jewish.
"True, however, when we began editing the movie, I realized that the boy who translated did not want to tell his friends that part and instead said I was a Christian. It shows you the degree of antisemitism in such a miserable place. When I realized this, I was filled with sadness, because the boy who translated was nice to me. This is a rotten place in humanity's heart.
"For me, these youngsters are innocent and aren't responsible for what their parents did. That's why their innocence and the inability to pronounce the word 'Jew' makes me sad."
Q: You say your Jewish identity is important to you. Will you celebrate the upcoming holiday of Hannukah?
"I am a committed and devoted Jew; I study the religion. But I would not say I'm a great practitioner of the sacred dates. I don't celebrate holidays or have feasts with my family, except if I'm with friends who do. My Jewishness is someplace else, it's in the books which I try to study as much as I can."
Q: What is your take on the young generation? Would you say social media has made them more self-centered?
"No, I don't think so. Can the internet be a source of stupidity and fake news? Of course. But it can also be a source of knowledge. And when it's used well, it can be a source of information and I know more youngsters who use it this way. So, I am not as pessimistic.
"Working on my film, I saw that many in the audience were young people and they followed it from the start to the end and they even tried to read more in books, newspapers, and the internet. So no, I believe that the new generation, with the tools that they have, if they are a kid with goodwill, they might even do better."
Q: What do you do in your spare time?
"I love life, I have my pleasures, of course. I don't drink wine, but I do enjoy an occasional good movie, to spend time in the company of good friends. But most of my time is devoted to learning, studying and writing, and I love to be outdoors, in the sun."
Q: Are you considering retirement?
"No, never. When you see my film, I have done as much as I would have done if I were half my age. For me, I'm like the Jews of the remote past. Age does not matter."
