Pankaj Mishra: "Netanyahu is the most dangerous person for Jews since Nazism."

BarcelonaPankaj Mishra (Jhansi, India, 1969) is one of the most lucid intellectuals of our time. He visited Barcelona at the invitation of the CCCB to present his latest book, The world after Gaza (Galaxia Gutenberg), in which he explores a heartbreaking question: how could we have allowed what's happening in Gaza to happen? He also analyzes its consequences: he says it's a fiction to think that the norms and laws established after World War II could still be legitimate after Gaza.

In the prologue, he says he felt almost compelled to write this book to "relieve" his "demoralizing perplexity in the face of a moral decay and to invite readers to search for answers that seem more urgent in times of darkness."

— Many things are happening in today's world that are signs of a geopolitical and economic earthquake, whether it's Trump's tariffs or Orbán's invitation to Netanyahu. There is a very profound rupture. But I think the biggest earthquake is the great moral perversion that allows Israel to commit continuous massacres and to do so absolutely openly. They don't try to hide: they claim their actions with their words. This isn't about defending themselves; it's about destroying Gaza, it's about expelling the Palestinian population, it's about killing. I think Europe is failing to confront the gravity of the moment. And this will be an enormous burden for European political leaders and also for the intelligentsia, which hasn't raised its voice: most writers, intellectuals, and journalists remain silent. And this, for people in the rest of the world, is terrible proof of how false and hypocritical Europe's proclamation of democracy, the values of civilization, and humanism are. Europe's response to Gaza is destroying its credibility and moral legitimacy. The United States was gone, but Europe had the opportunity to free itself from a genocidal regime supported by Washington and offer the world something new. And it's failing.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Hungary, which failed to comply with its obligation to arrest and hand him over to The Hague as a suspected war criminal. In his speech in Budapest, he said that he and his counterpart Viktor Orbán, a leading exponent of the far right, are part of the "Judeo-Christian civilization."

— What he's basically saying is, "We are now part of white civilization, and we must act brutally against dissidents, people who talk about democracy, immigrants, Muslims. We have a common front against these enemies." There's nothing in history that resembles a Judeo-Christian civilization. What he really means is that he champions white supremacy. The State of Israel, antisemites in Europe, and evangelical Christians in the United States have a common enemy and want to fight it together.

And you argue that this is really dangerous for Jews around the world.

— Netanyahu is the most dangerous person for Jews since Nazism. Blaming world Jewry for what Israel does is truly anti-Semitic. Remember when all Muslims were held responsible for al-Qaeda's attacks? That triggered Islamophobia. And now Israel's genocide in Gaza could trigger Judeophobia. We need political leaders who make it clear that Jews living in Europe, the United States, or Asia should not be confused with the State of Israel. It's incredibly dangerous to confuse the State of Israel with the Jewish population.

The global far right has become Israel's main ally, from Trump to Orbán, Marine Le Pen, and Milei. Are they hiding their Judeophobia behind their Islamophobia?

— It's not just about antisemitism or Islamophobia. We're talking about networks of money and power, and an undemocratic way of exercising power. They have strong prejudices against Muslims or immigrants. But what really unites them is the desire to preserve their wealth and power. Moral issues don't concern them: they'll do whatever it takes. If Netanyahu needs the support of antisemites, he'll seek it. If he needs to stand with Christian evangelicals, he will. And similarly, far-right leaders who believe Jews are taking over the world and buy into antisemitic conspiracy theories—if they need to stand with Israel, they will do so too.

In the book, he explains in detail how Israel has exploited the memory of the Holocaust.

— When the memory of the Holocaust belonged to the people who suffered it, who survived it and carried its memory with them, it was an individual memory that they shared. But Israel created a collective memory that did not emerge naturally or organically from what happened. It was created by the state, by political parties, by museums, by textbooks. It was the very methodical construction of a narrative designed to serve as the basis for the legitimacy of the Israeli state. Many people don't know this, but when the first Holocaust survivors arrived in Israel, they were treated with contempt: David Ben-Gurion called them "human remains." He said that all the good Jews had been murdered. At first, the Holocaust was not a subject of academic study; there were no museums. It wasn't until the 1960s that people in Israel began to talk about the Holocaust. But with an interpretation: that it had happened because the Jews were weak and that they should be strong to ensure it wouldn't happen again. And that the Palestinians and neighboring Arab countries were an existential threat. And so the Holocaust became a justification for Israel's violent expansionism, with the occupation of Palestinian territories and the construction of settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. Several generations have now been raised fearing a new, imminent Holocaust, many of whom had no direct experience, neither they nor their ancestors. Therefore, those who had, like Primo Levi, were dismayed by how Israel was becoming a far-right expansionist power and distanced themselves from it. A rift developed between Holocaust survivors and the State of Israel.

You claim that we are facing a decolonization conflict.

— The process of decolonization of the European empires began precisely as the state of Israel was emerging in the heart of the Middle East. So for many people in Asia and Africa, the majority of the planet's population, the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 represented something strange: Europeans arrived in the Middle East and created a new nation-state just as the rest of the world was beginning to decolonize. Israel was and is seen as an imposition of Western colonialism. Europe must understand that the vast majority of the world's population sees Israel as something imposed on the Palestinians with Western help. And that Palestinians continue to suffer extreme violence thanks to Western support for the state of Israel. This was already creating enormous conflict even before Trump started imposing tariffs. There is enormous resentment, enormous anger against European countries, against the United States, because people can no longer stand racial inequalities.

In Gaza, all red lines have been crossed; international law has been left on paper. It seems nothing can stop Netanyahu.

— We must keep fighting. We must keep writing. We must keep creating communities where we can unite and become a strong political force that can truly exert pressure. I understand and share many people's sense of frustration and helplessness. But we also know that in many places, neither politicians nor the media are representative of public opinion, which believes Israel has gone too far and must end the war. This is what most people in the United Kingdom, France, and even Germany think.

What will the world be like after Gaza?

— I don't want to soften the answer to that question. We're facing a very bleak scenario. I think perhaps in Barcelona it's important to remember that in the 1930s, many writers everywhere understood that the future of Europe was at stake in the Spanish Civil War. Not only because Hitler and Mussolini were helping Franco by bombing cities and towns. Not only because European democracies didn't help Spanish democrats. Above all because the norms of decency had been broken in that war. And this could unleash a dynamic of nihilism across the continent. I think that twenty years from now, when historians look back, they will see Gaza as the beginning of a much larger conflagration. And I think what I have to do is ask my readers to prepare themselves.