Jean-Pierre Fillu's words must be read closely: written with surgical precision and without ever giving in to rhetorical excess, they lay bare what Israel is doing in Gaza.
His book, “Un Historien à Gaza,” tells the story of what survivors from the coastal enclave have been saying for over 18 months, and what any honest observer with a genuine interest in the issue has long understood: This war is the dark stain of our era, the final nail in the coffin of the liberal international order, and a testing ground for our collective abandonment of the utopia of a different world. This is the blind spot that, since left unaddressed, has consumed everything else.
Let the guardians of international law determine the legal classification of what is taking place and decide whether or not it constitutes genocide. This debate has already taken up too much space and obscured what truly matters: from the moment the International Court of Justice, in January 2024, cited a “plausible risk of genocide”; from the moment Israeli leaders openly declared their intent to make Gaza unlivable — and matched words with action by starving the population, destroying all public infrastructure, and killing civilians and fighters alike under the pretext of fighting Hamas — any person, individual or institution, claiming to care about international law should have done everything in their power to stop it.
Everything else is just noise.
What makes Filiu’s account particularly valuable is that it comes from a man who has never lost his moral compass, who understands that the fates of Gaza and Ukraine are closely intertwined, a rigorous historian with deep knowledge of the Middle East who has never indulged in romanticizing Hamas or the self-proclaimed ‘Axis of Resistance.’
His testimony arrives at a moment when Western consciences are beginning to stir, and may help quicken that awakening. For while this awakening may be welcome, it is undeniably both belated and, above all, timid and incomplete.
What, after all, triggered it? Was it a recognition of the true nature of Israel’s project in Gaza? A fear of ending up on the wrong side of history, or worse, of being seen as complicit in this tragedy? Perhaps the sidelining of the ‘Iran question,’ which has made the geopolitical landscape easier to navigate?
We are unable to determine what exactly caused this shift, and whether it is genuine or merely superficial. In any case, it is inadequate, for at least three reasons. First, it remains rooted in humanitarian, instead of political, logic. Yes, there is an urgent humanitarian crisis that must be addressed, but that cannot be the beginning and end of the Western narrative.
Even if Israel were to grant full humanitarian access to Gaza tomorrow, it would not change the core issue: The denial of any legitimate Palestinian political existence. Oct. 7 is also a consequence of that denial. As long as Western actors fail to grasp this, the stalemate will persist.
The second reason is tied to a fundamental misunderstanding among Western officials: The problem goes far beyond Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government. If another leader were to come to power tomorrow, perhaps he would maintain a more civil tone with Western partners, perhaps he would calm some of the internal tensions fracturing Israeli society. But there is no reason to believe he would pursue a meaningfully different policy toward Palestinians.
Netanyahu may be Israel’s primary problem, but he is not Palestine’s. He has merely taken to its extreme a process of erasing an entire people, a process that preceded him and will likely continue after him. His approach, in this respect, enjoys support well beyond the far-right fringes. None of his political opponents speak seriously of establishing a Palestinian state.
The anti-Netanyahu narrative, while necessary, at best sustains a kind of blindness to the deeper transformation of Israeli society over recent decades.
The third reason why this apparent shift in conscience is inadequate: actions have not followed words. The West’s hardening of tone has come with threats, but not with sanctions. This halfway approach is doubly counterproductive. First, because Israel sees even the slightest criticism as an act of betrayal that calls everything else into question. Second, because this so-called “balanced” approach offers no real leverage over the Israeli state.
Western powers, especially Europeans, must make a choice. Either they consider Israel a strategic ally, for any number of reasons, and choose to look away from what is happening in Gaza, dropping the pretense of supporting a two-state solution that they know full well is no longer viable due to the colonization of the West Bank. Or they determine that resolving the Palestinian question, and upholding the principles they claim to stand for, matters more than that alliance, and commit to exerting real pressure.
That means treating Israel, on the basis of its actions, as a pariah state. And speaking to it in the only language it understands, like any other predator: The language of power.