France’s Bold Zionist Poet and His Attack on Assimilation

Dec. 23 2024

Born into a well-to-do Jewish family in Nancy, André Spire (1868–1966) came of age at a time when, as Daniel Solomon puts it, France’s Jews felt “a serene confidence” in their place in French society. Spire, an aspiring poet and writer pursuing a career in the civil service, challenged anti-Semites to duels on more than one occasion. But soon he concluded that anti-Semitism was too big a problem to be solved with pistols:

Spire declared himself a Zionist for the first time in a letter to his mother, dated October 12, 1904. . . . “I do not feel much enthusiasm to live with [Polish Jews], but it would be much better to live with them than with many Christians. . . . So, ‘next year in Jerusalem.’”

The appearance of Poèmes Juifs (1908) announced Spire’s debut as an unbending opponent of assimilation and indefatigable proponent of Zionism. . . . Spire’s poems savaged the Franco-Jewish consensus and the figure of the assimilated Jew. In “Assimilation,” he mocks a Jewish bourgeois who seeks to blend into the crowd. The poem’s unnamed protagonist scrutinizes himself for the slightest deviation from the norm—in deportment, speech, hand gestures, nose shape, hair texture—and reassures himself that he can fit in. The poet breaks in the last stanzas to upbraid this French Jewish bourgeois.

Read more at Tablet

More about: French Jewry, Poetry, Zionism

The Mass Expulsion of Palestinians Is No Solution. Neither Are Any of the Usual Plans for Gaza

Examining the Trump administration’s proposals for the people of Gaza, Danielle Pletka writes:

I do not believe that the forced cleansing of Gaza—a repetition of what every Arab country did to the hundreds of thousands of Arab Jews in 1948— is a “solution.” I don’t think Donald Trump views that as a permanent solution either (read his statement), though I could be wrong. My take is that he believes Gaza must be rebuilt under new management, with only those who wish to live there resettling the land.

The time has long since come for us to recognize that the establishment doesn’t have the faintest clue what to do about Gaza. Egypt doesn’t want it. Jordan doesn’t want it. Iran wants it, but only as cannon fodder. The UN wants it, but only to further its anti-Semitic agenda and continue milking cash from the West. Jordanians, Lebanese, and Syrians blame Palestinians for destroying their countries.

Negotiations with Hamas have not worked. Efforts to subsume Gaza under the Palestinian Authority have not worked. Rebuilding has not worked. Destruction will not work. A “two-state solution” has not arrived, and will not work.

So what’s to be done? If you live in Washington, New York, London, Paris, or Berlin, your view is that the same answers should definitely be tried again, but this time we mean it. This time will be different. . . . What could possibly make you believe this other than ideological laziness?

Read more at What the Hell Is Going On?

More about: Donald Trump, Gaza Strip, Palestinians