OPINION: Israel not alone in seeing far-right infect its values

Israel’s election has fractured opinion in British Jewry. An ever larger part of the community regards an administration led by Benjamin Netanyahu supported by the far-right as an affront to democracy and the principles behind the nation’s declaration of independence.

Israel is not alone. The rise of the far-right is has become a feature in several of Europe’s most trusted democracies. In the US the tide of Trumpism may have been halted in the mid-term elections but the angry mood on the right of politics has not been silenced.

A theme for many rightist movements is admiration for Israel for standing up to the hostile tides around it. But it is accompanied by a latent (sometimes open) antisemitic, anti-immigration narrative at home.

In Israel, aside from the international embarrassment of a prime minister, albeit with a generous mandate, still living under the cloud of corruption allegations, the concern is that support from Itmar Ben-Gvir, of the Jewish Power party, and Bezalel Smotrich undermines the country’s value system.

The judiciary is being challenged alongside civil society groups and freedom of the press. Also under threat are Israel’s moves to be a more ‘shared society’ in which Israel’s Palestinian minority can build on the progress made and not demonised as the main sources of crime and violence.

In many ways Israel’s political shift to the far-right is parallel with trends in other Western democracies. The narrative of the US mid-terms has been interpreted as a victory for the voices of reason led by Joe Biden over the Trump tendency in the Republican Party. Yes, the wipeout for the Democrats didn’t happen. But there is no escaping the fact that the House of Representatives is back in Republican hands and the big winner is regarded as Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida.

His victory is seen as diminishing Donald Trump’s ambition. But DeSantis is no moderate and his views are a decaffeinated version of Trump. Biden, supported by an energised Barack Obama, effectively used the slogan ‘Democracy is under threat’. But that it came to that in the world’s most sophisticated democracy, where in some states even the dog-catchers are elected, says a great deal about how Trump, his bizarre followers and sections of the Republican Party have become divorced from civil political debate.

Amid all the focus of what is going on in Israel and the USA, comparatively little attention is paid to the rise of the ultra-right in Europe. The iron fist rule of Viktor Orban in Hungary is often discussed.

But who, for instance, has paid much attention to what has happened in Sweden, which is often idealised among Britain’s liberals for its social democracy. The present administration in Stockholm is in power only because it is supported by the Swedish Democrats a party with roots in Second World War pro-Nazi movements.

In Italy, the third largest economy in the European Union, recent elections swept Giorgia Meloni, of the Brothers of Italy party, to power. Her party is the direct descendant of Benito Mussolini and the fascists. Meloni is already engaged in a bitter dispute with neighbour France over immigration.

Then there is France itself. Emmanuel Macron maybe safely ensconced as president. But his freedom of action on immigration, relations with the rest of Europe and domestic policy is severely limited by the National Assembly. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, formerly the National Front, a party with neo-Nazi roots, occupies 79 seats in the assembly and garnered 41 percent of the votes in the last election.

Right-wing nationalism, fuelled in Europe and the USA by anti-immigration rhetoric, is on the march. Israel is not alone in its swing to the right. Immigration is a key issue for Britain too.

But there is no history of fascism in the UK and the extreme right and antisemitism receives short shrift in elections.

That gifts British Jewry the right to take the moral high ground when it comes to speaking out against the erosion of judicial independence and the rights of minority Palestinians in Israel.