INSTITUT EURO-MEDITERRANEEN
Pour le dialogue entre les civilisations
EURO-MEDITERRANEAN INSTITUTE
For Dialogue Between the Civilisations (EMID)
Think European, breathe Mediterranean
Here is the sea, great and wide
Psalm 104:25.
Israel is too entangled in its security problems and inter-community disputes to be placed on a symbolic atlas. Some favour the West, others the East. But it is neither of those, nor does it want to be in either of those areas. The years spent visiting the West and leading research there are worth nothing if we do not bring from them ways of thinking, debating and creating that would ensure the prosperity of local populations. On the other hand,it means nothing to see ourselves as being in the East if it only serves to increase passions and exclude those who do not share its values or virtues.
The Mediterranean, with its beauty, senses and light, was an extraordinary leap for immigrants from the ghettos of Bucharest and Warsaw, Buenos Aires and Cleveland, Berlin and London, or cities on the Atlas and in the Aurès. Whereas first-generation immigrants continue to refer to their places of origin, whether Morocco or Poland, the Black Sea or the Caspian Sea, their descendants know only the slice of coastline that borders this "middle sea".
The geopolitical drift of Israel highlights the drift of young generations who would find better religious ghettos in Brooklyn and Vancouver, better laboratories at Harvard and Sydney, better incubators in Silicon Valley and Hong Kong, better creative workshops in Berlin and London. Israel's best choice will be to locate itself at the crossroads of waves of migration, styles of architecture, arts and music. By entering the Euro-Mediterranean space, it would tear itself away from national ghettoisation, stop meandering through a geographical non-space, and decrease its uncertainty. Israel is attached to the Mediterranean for better and for worse and would do well to adopt the prospects on offer, turning to Greece and Turkey, Spain and Italy, Morocco and Lebanon. The Mediterranean would give it the promise of a multicultural and multi-faith conversation.