The Middle East is an excellent generator of fractures. It's not just about what's happening there today, but about its boomerang effect and its extraordinary divisive capacity. Palestine always brings to light the European diversity in our relationship with Israel. It can be seen in the polarization of public opinion and the impact on our political system and parties. Many European leaders today are doing real acrobatics to address the dilemmas we face. After his campaign against rising anti-Semitism in Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, its new leader, Keir Starmer, has found that many Muslim activists and voters reject his current pro-Israel stance. The gap has led to the resignation of several Muslim councillors in Leicester and Oxford and is causing tensions that augur a complicated race to Downing Street, even if the polls are now favourable. And something similar is happening with Biden's Democratic Party, a year before the election. Their position erodes the West's credibility vis-à-vis the Global South, but it also comes at a domestic cost. The Muslim vote is decisive in some swing states, and the Jewish vote has become even more ideologically and generationally fractured after this latest outbreak, as we saw in the massive pro-Palestine rally called by Jewish Voices for Peace in front of the Capitol.
Elsewhere, the emotionality in which we move leads us to absolute moral indignation, which inevitably causes the frames of discussion to fall into the hands of the extremes. The paradigmatic example is France. While Mélenchon does not condemn Hamas' terrorism in order to capitalize on the wrath of the Arab-Muslim community of the banlieues, Le Pen is quick to present herself as Israel's greatest defender. This Manichaeism makes the demand for condemnation succumb to mere presentism, since those who, in addition to condemning what happened, contextualize it, are accused of being anti-Semitic. On the other hand, part of the left may be guilty of what Žižek has called "anti-Eurocentrism": her empathy with Palestine would have to do with the fact that, for her, "it is forbidden to see anything progressive in the European heritage".
And there is a third, cruder, though perhaps more effective, level of polarization. This week, for example, Isabel Díaz Ayuso criticised the transfer of migrants from the Canary Islands to other communities at a time, according to her, "of maximum fear for national security". Ayuso, Meloni and Le Pen understand that Europe is at a crossroads, facing two wars and haunted by the spectre of immigration. The far right is setting its agenda and is aware of the benefits of mixing it all up with what has happened in the Middle East. John Gray has said that we will remember October 7 as the day when a "new age of barbarism" was born. Perhaps it is, but what is certain is that, if we renounce a civilized discussion with firm ethical coordinates, we will legitimize that barbarism and it will infect our entire public conversation. Let's not let them drag us into that mire.
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