James M. Dorsey
Times of Israel, Mar. 18, 2025
“Messrs. Netanyahu and Chikli’s invitation of the far right threatens to widen the growing wedge between Israel and significant segments of the Jewish Diaspora who are weary of Europe’s populist movements and the United States’s Trumpist Republicans.”
It’s ok to be anti-Jewish as long as you support Israel. That is Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s bottom line.
Mr. Netanyahu is willing to risk losing European officialdom and prominent mainstream intellectuals and activists in the fight against anti-Semitism to garner the support of the global far-right, despite its anti-Jewish roots and sustained links to racism and neo-Nazism.
Mr. Netanyahu and his de facto envoy to the global far-right, Diaspora Affairs and Combating Anti-Semitism Minister Amichai Chikli, intend to broadcast that message at an international conference on combatting anti-Semitism scheduled to open in Jerusalem later this month.
In doing so, Messrs. Netanyahu and Chikli appear to be oblivious to the contradiction between the Trump administration’s adoption and abuse of their equation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism to crackdown on pro-Palestinian students and their embrace of far-right groups with problematic histories and beliefs.
The list of Messrs. Netanyahu and Chikli’s conference invitees and the prominence of those who withdrew their participation once they saw the speakers’ line-up tells the story.
The list reflects Mr. Netanyahu’s long-standing cuddling up to religious leaders and far-right groups and figures whose theological and ideological roots are tainted by strains of anti-Semitism and, no less objectionable, Islamophobia. …SOURCE