OPINION: Time for Israel to rethink who her true friends are
Support for the Jewish State does not automatically mean Europe’s far-right has distanced itself from antisemitism
It speaks to the changing political climate that, back in March, Israel’s president Isaac Herzog was pictured smiling and shaking hands with the Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders.
A decade ago, such a photograph would have been unthinkable. Wilders, whose Party for Freedom won last year’s general election in the Netherlands and is now part of the government there, has, after all, long held extreme views on Islam, immigration and Europe: he has called for the ‘de-Islamisation’ of his country through a ban on Islamic schools, Qurans and mosques.
He is, however, also a staunch supporter of Israel, tweeting of his meeting with its head of state: “I told him I am proud that he visits the Netherlands and that Israel has, and always will have, my full support in its fight against terror.”
Herzog is not the only Israeli politician to lend Wilders his imprimatur. “Thank you, [Wilders],” foreign minister Israel Katz tweeted on 1 October. “The support and solidarity from leaders and nations around the world will never be forgotten. We know who our friends are.”
And Wilders is not the only far-right populist in Europe to gain the support of a leading Israeli politician. In July, diaspora affairs minister Amichai Chikli broke diplomatic convention and intervened in French legislative elections by endorsing Marine Le Pen.
Le Pen is a classic example of a far-right leader who has sought to belie her party’s antisemitic roots: her father, Jean-Marie, was convicted multiple times for denying or minimising the Holocaust. She has adopted a pro-Israel posture at a time when anti-Jewish hatred is on the rise and Jews across Europe feel pushed out from certain left-wing spaces in which they had traditionally found allies.
Le Pen also won the support of the activist, Nazi hunter and Holocaust survivor Serge Klarsfeld, who in June said he would vote for her National Rally. Philosopher Alain Finkielkraut too said that, if faced with a choice between the far-right and far-left, he would have “no other choice” but to plump for Le Pen.
The European far-right’s turn towards Israel, decades in the making but accelerated by the events of 7 October, is born out of a mixture of opportunism, romanticism and political reality. It benefits from its appearance of being pro-Israel, which has become a means of avoiding the charge of being antisemitic, even though, as in the case of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán’s case, his government is waging a propaganda war against the Jewish Hungarian-born philanthropist George Soros.
The European far-right, though, is also taken by the image of Israel as a ‘villa in the jungle’: an outpost of, through their eyes, Judeo-Christian civilisation in a thicket of Muslim enemies. Israel as the ‘muscular Jew,’ moreover, serves as a counterpoint to Jews such as Soros, for whom the far-right reserves especial opprobrium, a fixture in their conspiratorial thinking.
This (from a far-right perspective) idealistic image overlooks, of course, the complex realities of modern Israel, some of which Europe’s far-right would abhor. It is also true, though, that that reality includes a government to which the Israeli far-right is now party and figures on the European far-right feel, therefore, a natural affinity.
Both Israel and Jews in Europe, however, should think carefully about who their true friends are in this time of crisis. Support for Israel does not automatically mean Europe’s far-right has distanced itself either from antisemitism or from its murderous history.
Consider that two days after Austria’s Freedom Party won legislative elections last month, several prominent members of the far-right party attended a funeral in Vienna at which Wenn alle untreu warden, once a song of allegiance to the SS, was sung.
That Europe’s Muslims have become the main enemy of the far-right does not mean, either, that Jewish communities are immune. A ban on religious circumcision or slaughter of animals, in an effort to outlaw Islamic practices, will mean a ban on brit milah and shechita too.
To Herzog, Europe’s far-right may appear to serve a purpose for Israel for now. But any alliance with the continent’s worst actors will only prove in the end to be destructive both for Israel and for Europe’s Jewish communities.
- Liam Hoare is a Vienna-based journalist
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