It is often repeated, like a mantra, that recognizing the State of Palestine would amount to handing Hamas a victory. But this overlooks a stubborn truth: it is precisely the refusal to recognize Palestine that fuels Islamism, by reinforcing the idea that only violence can open prospects. Saying yes to Palestine means giving substance to the two-state solution and thus marginalizing those who reject it. Hamas first and foremost.

Dear friend, When, in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, I called—in an editorial that didn’t earn me many friends (Screen Watch, #38, October 2023)—for an end to Hamas’s occupation of Gaza, while reminding readers of the fascislamist ideology of this organization and the Nazi affinities of its founders and inspirers, we felt united in grief and horror. Beyond our origins, our faith or lack of it, and our political positions, we were bound together in a humanist surge against ignominy, stunned to see a word resurface that we thought—and wanted—banished forever: Pogrom!

This is the story of a man who joined jihad at the age of 21, fought the “Great Western Satan” for two decades, seized power by force, and was “elected” president of the republic—not through the ballot box but through Bay’a, the oath of allegiance sworn by his followers. And now, here he is, received with honors at the Élysée and presented as a “moderate” who has renounced jihadist violence and is supposedly leading a democratic transition! All while his followers continue to massacre minorities in his country.

Of course, the independence of the judiciary and the separation of powers are essential conditions for judicial impartiality. The verdict delivered by the Paris correctional court against Marine Le Pen, in the case of the Front National’s (now Rassemblement National) European parliamentary assistants, stems from this necessary—and sometimes perplexing—independence of judges. The surprise and embarrassment that the verdict has cast on the political class… even at the highest levels of government, are a testament to this.

The revolution is underway in Damascus. Once again, in the Arab world, history takes a dramatic turn, and the Syrian people hold their breath. Bashar al-Assad has fled the country, and Islamists have seized power. What lies ahead? The battalions led by Abu Mohammed al-Joulani, a former jihadist of ISIS and then al-Qaeda - whom he allegedly parted ways with in 2016 - thank Allah from the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, a radiant symbol of Sunni Islam. These images will go down in history, though no one knows how it will unfold.

Kamel Daoud should have won the Goncourt Prize in 2014. That year, his debut novel (“Meursault, contre-enquête,” Actes Sud) was the favorite. Legend has it that he was edged out by “Pas pleurer” by Lydie Salvayre, thanks to a vote (opposed to Daoud) from Tahar Ben Jelloun, a Goncourt jury member and the only North African writer to have won the prize, in 1987, for “La nuit sacrée” (Seuil).

More than just an electoral victory, it is a landslide victory that places Donald Trump back at the top of the world. Moreover, it grants him unprecedented powers that no other American president has ever held. On January 20th, the egocentric billionaire, with a personality as colorful as his famous orange hair, will not only reclaim the keys to the White House. His administration, the 47th of its kind, will also have the support of the majority in both chambers of Congress. It will also count on the backing of the Supreme Court, which he had shaped with conservative appointments at the end of his first term (2017-2021).

Are the democratic values championed by Europe and the United States destined to fall under the expansionist fury of Eastern autocrats like Khamenei, Putin, Xi Jinping, and Erdogan? Jean-François Colosimo, author of “The West, Global Enemy No. 1” (Albin Michel), and Amin Maalouf, who examines the roots of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in “The Maze of the Lost: The West and its Adversaries” (Grasset), prompt a necessary reflection on this topic.

Are we that far from them? The ocean that separates us from the Americans seems to be shrinking on the eve of a crucial presidential election for the United States and the world. Could the breakdown of the American dream, crystallised by the enthusiasm of half the nation for a Donald Trump who is delirious - “executing babies after birth, Haitian refugees eating cats and dogs” - and threatening the worst if he does not win, be the XXL version of the breakdown of the French dream? They are going to vote while we are still recovering from our own elections, from the European elections in June to the legislative elections in July. Loss of buying power, rifts between communities, hate-filled dialogues, ultra-violence, the dictatorship of social networking sites, the grip of conspiracy theorists: the debates that have set the American scene ablaze are echoed in our own.

The recent European and parliamentary elections show the extent to which a large proportion of the political class is out of touch with the people and incapable of delivering a long-term project that unites the nation as a whole. On the one hand, the Macronie elites, whose sole obsession is to “deliver” us from the peril of the far right, have shown no vision for turning France around. To put it plainly, they have done nothing but avoid confrontation with reality. On the other hand, the Woke compatible media, which practices Big Brother-style inversion of values, has for years been constantly telling the French how they should think, travel and consume, without imagining that they would one day make them pay for it, this overflow of inane moralizing.