Join philosopher and film director Bernard-Henri Lévy with the Chairman of 92NY Talks, Thomas S. Kaplan, to discuss Lévy’s deeply personal, wrenching eyewitness account of his trip to Israel the day after the October 7 attacks — and his new book, Israel Alone.
On October 8, 2023, Bernard-Henri Lévy travelled to Israel to bear witness to the unprecedented invasion and outright massacre committed by Hamas. What he saw shook him to his core. Weaving in some 50 years of personal history with the country — including Lévy’s active participation in peace plans and private contacts with Israeli leaders including Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Yitzhak Rabin and others — Israel Alone paints the portrait of a nation with its back to the wall, yet still full of hope.
A year into the war, this fall marked a series of victories by Israel against Hezbollah and Hamas, but also the launch by Iran of over 180 ballistic missiles in an unprecedented attack. What are the long-term geopolitical implications of these latest developments, for the region and for the United States? How will the seismic trauma of October 7 affect Israeli society going forward? How should Americans respond to the rising tide of antisemitism unleashed in its wake? How have actors such as Iran, Russia, China, Turkey, and radical Islamist groups played roles in — and leveraged — this tragedy?
Hear our speakers discuss what Lévy saw in Israel on October 8, and what that watershed event and its consequences might mean for the new world we have all entered.