OPINION: Go back to where you came from, Tommy – you are not welcome in Israel

Tommy Robinson has arrived in Israel. And with him, the stench of everything our grandparents fled from

A man who spent years shouting that immigrants should “go back to where they came from” has now flown to the land of immigrants, to the home of the Jewish people, and been welcomed by an Israeli minister. You could not invent a darker parody of moral blindness.

Yet yesterday, Robinson – the convicted criminal, professional bigot, and founder of the English Defence League – touched down in Tel Aviv at the personal invitation of Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister, Amichai Chikli. He is due to meet the Knesset speaker, Amir Ohana, and to address a large Likud-linked gathering in Tel Aviv.

A man who built his fame by demonising minorities will stand on a stage in the Jewish state, cheered by members of its ruling party, while the minister responsible for protecting the world’s Jews nods along. This is not outreach. It is betrayal.

A Diaspora minister is meant to be a guardian of Jewish communities abroad, not a promoter of cynical alliances that put them at risk

It is a betrayal of British Jews who have spent years warning that Robinson is not a friend but a threat. It is a betrayal of every European Jew who knows that the far right’s supposed “love for Israel” is just the latest mask for the same old hatred. And it is a betrayal of Israelis, who deserve leaders capable of recognising danger rather than embracing it.

For Chikli to welcome Tommy Robinson here is to confuse Israel’s purpose with its parody. It is to imagine that the way to fight antisemitism is to court its ideological cousins. It is to take the very ideology that fuelled Jewish persecution for centuries – ethnic supremacy, paranoia, purity politics – and treat it as an ally.

The far right is not Israel’s friend. It is the oldest, most sophisticated enemy the Jewish people have ever known. Its slogans change, its uniforms change, but its creed does not. There must always be an outsider, always a scapegoat, always someone to hate. Today it may be Muslims. Tomorrow, again, it will be us.

A Diaspora minister is meant to be a guardian of Jewish communities abroad, not a promoter of cynical alliances that put them at risk. Chikli has turned the vulnerability of Diaspora Jews into a prop for his own culture war. That is not strategy. That is moral vandalism.

British Jews have fought for decades to be accepted as full citizens. Robinson’s message is that they never will be. And now, thanks to Chikli, he can wave an Israeli flag and claim vindication. The far right across Europe will take note. They will whisper: the Jews have chosen our side. And from that whisper will grow the familiar echo of history. When hatred finds new legitimacy, Jews always pay the price.

If Israel stands for anything, it must stand for this: we must never welcome the apostles of hate. Not when they target minorities. Not when they target migrants. Not when they wrap their prejudice in a blue-and-white flag.

So the message must be clear, loud, and final: Tommy Robinson, go back to where you came from. You are not welcome here.

Go back to the backstreets of Luton, where your movement hurled bottles at immigrants and called it patriotism. Go back to the message boards where you spread conspiracies about Muslims, migrants and Jews alike. Go back to the corners of the internet where men like you turn fear into identity.

But do not come here. Not to Israel. Not to the country built as a refuge from men like you.