“It’s a terrifying world”: in Gaza, Jean-Pierre Filiu alerts on the collapse of our humanity

Historian and professor at Sciences Po, Jean-Pierre Filiu publishes A historian in Gaza (Éditions Les Arènes), A story born from a month spent at the heart of the Palestinian enclave with Doctors Without Borders, between December 2024 and January 2025. Guest on France Inter, he delivers a lucid, worried, and deeply political testimony.

“I started this book in Gaza, but I wanted to finish it in kyiv, where I go regularly since the Russian invasion,” he explains, highlighting the link between the major current geopolitical fractures. “It is impossible to pretend to act on land without acting on the other. »»

But it is the situation in Gaza that alerts him most. “What is at stake in Gaza is humanity. You have to be afraid of Gaza. But above all, you have to be afraid of what Gaza has become. He describes an area delivered to a “jungle law”, where the most vulnerable – civilians, children, sick – are the first victims. “Gaza is the laboratory of a lawless world, with the proliferation of private security, the privatization of aid … It is a terrifying world, which I could see in Gaza. “To those who would like to see there a more localized conflict, Jean-Pierre Filiu responds without ambiguity:” It is not an additional medium-eastern war. What is happening in Gaza fully engages our humanity and its future. »»