Ignoring ingrained anti-Semitism, Israel backs global far-right

 By James M. Dorsey

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Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Credit: Flash90

This year, Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli hit the road.

Not to shore up Diaspora Jewish support for Israel’s war on Gaza or reassure Jews concerned about rising anti-Semitism but to forge closer ties to the global far-right tainted by its anti-Semitic roots.

Israel’s self-appointed ambassador to the global far-right, Mr. Chikli, appears to have Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s tacit endorsement, even if other Cabinet members, like Foreign Minister Israel Katz, are more circumspect about their far-right relationships to avoid being seen as interfering in the domestic affairs of others.

Mr. Chikli serves Mr. Netanyahu’s purpose. The two men share a long-standing proclivity for the far-right, but as prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu must maneuver cautiously to avoid complicating Israel’s diplomatic relations.

Mr. Netanyahu’s inclinations were evident in his preference for Donald Trump as president compared to Mr. Trump’s predecessor, Barak Obama, and the prime minister’s playing for time in the Gaza war in the hope that Mr. Trump would win the November US election.

Mr. Netanyahu’s preferences are also on display in his alliance with Evangelists, who believe that Jews’ salvation is conversion to Christianity no later than on the Day of Judgement. Some of Mr. Netanyahu’s Evangelist supporters, like US televangelist John Hagee, have histories of anti-Semitism.

Amichai Chikli and Vox leader Santiago Abascal. Source: X

In a further indication of Mr. Netanyahu’s predispositions, the prime minister violated the principle of Israel being a home to all Jews irrespective of their religious or political beliefs when he backed Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban in 2017/8 in his campaign against 92-year-old Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor and billionaire philanthropist George Soros that was laced with anti-Semitic tropes.

However, by the same token, Mr. Netanyahu has kept his distance to far-right European political parties like Spain’s Vox, which is home to Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis so as not to provoke the ire of European governments. That could change as far-right parties make headway in national elections, like in France, or come to office as in the Netherlands.

In the meantime, this is where Mr. Chikli comes in. A member of the prime minister’s Likud party with no significant popular base, Mr. Chikli can forge closer ties to the global far-right, one of Israel’s staunchest supporters at a time that public opinion in Europe and the United States is turning against the Jewish state while offering Mr. Netanyahu some cover.

Moreover, Mr. Chikli’s outreach to the far-right caters to Mr. Netanyahu’s ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative coalition partners on whom he is increasingly dependent.

Finally, from Mr. Netanyahu’s perspective, Mr. Chikli has the added advantage that he is politically expendable if the prime minister decides he is no longer an asset.

A recent report by Tel Aviv University's Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry highlighted Mr. Chikli’s lack of standing.

The report described Mr. Chikli as a "junior politician with little relevant experience" who "lacks vision and substance." Earlier this year, the center charged that his ministry was created "for nothing but petty political reasons."

Members of Mr. Netanyahu’s Cabinet and Likud party, including lawmakers Amit Halevi and Ohad Tal, Simcha Rothman, the architect of the prime minister’s controversial judicial reform, and Innovation, Science and Technology Minister Gila Gamliel, often join Mr. Chikli at international far-right gatherings.

Innovation, Science and Technology Minister Gila Gamliel with Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban at CPAC. Credit: Magyar Nemzet

Messrs. Chikli, Halevi, and Rothman, and Ms. Gamliel spoke in April at influential Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) meetings in Maryland and Hungary alongside Holocaust deniers, self-identified Nazis, and Christian nationalists.

In Budapest, Mr. Chikli shared the stage with Tom van Grieken, the head of Belgium's Vlaams Belang, a party with long-standing ties to both European neo-Nazis and the Likud.

Two weeks before CPAC, Mr. Chikli attended a "National Conservatism" conference in Brussels. The gathering’s opening session ended in chaos when Mayor Emir Kir, citing public order concerns, ordered the police to shut the event down.

In Brussels, Mr. Chikli decried the "loss of faith in (Europe’s) traditional Judeo-Christian faiths and beliefs."

In May, Knesset speaker and Likud member Amir Ohana invited New York Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanic for a blitz visit to Israel. Ms. Stefanik profiled herself as a staunch opponent of anti-Semitism in this year’s Congressional grilling of American university presidents and a supporter of Israel.

US Congresswoman Elise Stefanik in Israel. Credit: Elise Stefanik

Mr. Ohana brushed aside Ms. Stefanic’s failure to account for her history of anti-Semitism, including her propagation as recently as two years ago of the white supremacist Great Replacement Theory. The theory asserts that America’s elite, at times manipulated by Jews, aims to replace and disempower white Americans. The theory sparked mass shootings in the United States, New Zealand, and elsewhere.

Also in May, Mr. Chikli keynoted at a far-right gathering in Madrid where he rubbed shoulders with Argentinian President Javier Milei, Mr. Orban, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, French National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, and right-wing leaders from Chile and Portugal.

Vox, the far-right Spanish party, hosted the Europa Viva 24 conference in advance of the European Parliament elections in June.

Mr. Chikli’s engagement with Vox, whose leader, Santiago Abascal, visited Israel in December at the invitation of Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, broke with a long-standing Netanyahu refusal to legitimize the far-right party.

Credit: ETC

Mr. Abascal was followed in January by a delegation of the far-right Sweden Democrats, the second-largest party in the Scandinavian nation’s parliament, that has neo-Nazi and antisemitic roots.

Last October, Rebecka Fallenkvist, the 26-year-old head of the party’s television programming, called Anne Frank "immoral" and "horniness itself" in an Instagram post that was later deleted.

Ms. Frank was an acclaimed Dutch Jewess who documented in a diary life in hiding under Nazi persecution until the Germans killed her in 1944.

Days after her comments, Ms. Fallenkvist celebrated her party’s electoral success in Swedish with the words “Helg Seger’ which means weekend victory but sounds like ‘Sieg Heil,’ the Nazi greeting.

Last year, Canadian officials raised eyebrows at a private visit by Mr. Chikli during which he scheduled meetings with far-right figures rather than Jewish community representatives and keynoted at a Canada Christian College conference.

An anti-abortion activist who campaigned to repeal the legalization of same-sex marriage and the teaching of evolution theory, the college’s president, Charles McVety, is the treasurer of the Canadian affiliate of Global Evangelism Television.

Charles McVety and Amichai Chikli. Credit: Wikipedia Commons

Mr. Hagee, the far-right televangelist, Netanyahu associate, and head of Christians United for Israel, operates the television network.

Mr. Hagee has sparked controversy with assertions that Hitler and the Holocaust were God’s plan to chase the Jews from Europe back to Israel, that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for gay rights, and that the World Health Organization (WHO) used the COVID-19 pandemic to create a “one world economy, a one world government, a one world religion and a one world currency” in which “the whole world will be under the iron hoof of the Antichrist.”

The notion of a ‘one world government’ is a long-standing anti-Semitic and anti-globalist trope.

Countering critics of Israel’s tightening links to the far-right elsewhere, Mr. Chikli quipped in a Facebook posting, "For those who turn up their noses at the partnership with the conservative forces in the world, we will sign off on the immortal quote from (former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem) Begin: 'May he have a crooked nose.'"

Mr. Chikli, like Mr. Netanyahu and other members of the Likud party, finds common ground with the global far-right in its opposition to ‘radical Islam,’ which translates into support for Israel’s effort to destroy Hamas and quest to roll back democratic freedoms and rejection of Palestinian rights.

Amichai Chikli with Marine Le Pen. Source: Facebook

Responding to Ms. Le Pen’s far-right National Rally’s defeat in this month’s second round of French parliamentary elections, Mr. Chikli declared, "I'm not eulogizing her just yet; we are in it for the long run."

Earlier, Mr. Chikli asserted that a Le Pen presidency would be "excellent for Israel."

In a phone call with Mr. Netanyahu on the eve of the second round of the French elections, President Emmanuel Macron accused Mr. Chikli of interfering in his country’s domestic affairs.

The National Rally, formerly the National Front, was founded by Ms. Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who called the Nazi gas chambers a "detail" of World War II history, and Pierre Bousquet, a former member of the French division of Germany’s Nazi Waffen-SS.

Speaking on Israel's Army Radio, Mr. Chikli said Europe’s far-right has “a great love for Israel" and a "shared commitment to conservative values."

Anti-National Rally in Paris. Credit: AFP

Mr. Chikli said it was in Israel and the Diaspora’s interest to forge close ties to far-right European groups "who believe Islamic immigration is problematic and that radical Islam is very dangerous, primarily to the Jewish community."

Mr. Chikli’s prioritization of Israeli interests above Jewish concerns came as an EU Agency for Fundamental Rights survey concluded that 96 percent of respondents had experienced antisemitism in the year before the survey.

A total of 84 percent considered antisemitism to be a “very big” or “fairly big problem” in their country.

The agency’s director, Sirpa Rautio, noted, “Europe is witnessing a wave of antisemitism, partly driven by the conflict in the Middle East. This severely limits Jewish people’s ability to live in safety and with dignity.”

The Diaspora Affairs minister’s approach offered cold comfort to French Jews, Europe’s largest Jewish community, who were as concerned about the rise of the far-right as they were about far-left advances in the elections.

More fundamentally, Mr. Chikli was telling French Jews that Israel’s far-right prioritizes its perception of Israel’s interests, if need be, at the expense of the Diaspora.

Mr. Chikli has his counterparts in the Muslim world.

Muslim World League Secretary General Mohammed al-Issa speaks at right-wing Policy Exchange think tank in London. Credit: Policy Exchange

Speaking at a right-wing think tank in London on the eve of this month’s British elections and days before the French elections’ second round. Mohammed al-Issa, the head of Saudi Arabia’s Muslim World League and a close associate of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, praised Ms. Le Pen.

Like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Ms. Le Pen is bitterly opposed to expressions of political Islam. In addition, she has called for a ban on the hijab in public spaces. Her protégé, Jordan Bardella, advocated barring dual nationals from “the most strategic” state jobs.

“We have a good relationship with (Ms. Le Pen). Whenever we go to France, we meet with Miss Le Pen… We share friendship based on understanding… We share friendship based on understanding… All the intellectual points that we discussed, we agreed upon. It was an amazing conversation,” Mr. Al-Issa said.

Similarly, an Emirati financial services and asset management company with close ties to the country’s ruler helped bail out Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally in 2017 with a US$7.5 million loan.

 

UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed. Source: Facebook

Speaking that same year in a public forum, UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed, a brother of President Mohammed bin Zayed, warned that “there will come a day that we will see far more radical extremists and terrorists coming out of Europe because of lack of decision‐making, trying to be politically correct, or assuming that (the Europeans) know the Middle East, and they know Islam, and they know the others far better than we do…I’m sorry, but that’s pure ignorance.”

In a video since removed from public view on YouTube, Abdullah bin Zayed likened European Muslims to an ulcer that risked political violence.

Taking Mr. Chikli to task, journalist David Issacharoff thundered, “It is beyond absurd, and extremely dangerous, for Israel's Diaspora affairs minister – and its global antisemitism czar to boot – to claim that Jews in Europe are threatened only by Muslims and not by the neo-Nazi milieu of his far-right friends.”

Mr. Issacharoff added that the Israeli and European far-right “want to get Muslims out of sight, stoking fear and blending it with grievance. On this, Europe's far-right has more to learn from Israel than the other way around.”

Mr. Chikli, the son of a Conservative rabbi, is unabashed about his disdain for more liberal strands in Jewish thinking, like Reform Judaism, the largest Jewish denomination in the United States.

 

Protesters demonstrate against Amichai Chikli as he speaks at an American Jewish Committee meeting in Tel Aviv. Source: American Jewish Committee

“The Reform movement has identified itself with the radical left’s false accusations that the (Israeli West Bank) settlers are violent, so they have earned the criticism against them, and I cannot identify with them. They are going back to their roots in Germany of anti-Zionism and anti-nationalism,” Mr. Chikli said.

It's a remarkable statement for a minister whose portfolio includes fighting anti-Semitism and who represents a state that projects itself as the world’s only safe haven for Jews, irrespective of their ideological, religious, or political bent.

Reform Judaism is home to many prominent Jews, Mr. Chikli and the global far-right target, with Mr. Soros, the billionaire-philanthropist, at the top of the list.

Mr Netanyahu, in cohorts with American conservatives and Hungarian Prime Minister Orban, has long depicted Mr. Soros as the far-right’s boogeyman and mastermind of a globalist movement.

The prime minister’s far-right Christian associates depict Mr. Soros as determined to subvert the established order and dilute the white, Christian nature of societies through immigration.

Posters In Budapest warned: “Don't let George Soros have the last laugh.” Credit: Magyar Nezmet

Last year, Mr. Chikli, together with Foreign Minister Katz, joined a conservative American choir that accused Mr. Soros of funding pro-Palestinian protests in the United States, particularly on university campuses.

“Criticism of Soros – who finances the most hostile organizations to the Jewish people and the State of Israel – is anything but anti-Semitism, quite the opposite!” Mr. Chikli tweeted a year earlier in defense of Elon Musk when the billionaire attacked Mr. Soros.

“As Israel’s minister who's entrusted with combating anti-Semitism, I would like to clarify that the Israeli government and the vast majority of Israeli citizens see Elon Musk as an amazing entrepreneur and a role model.” Mr. Chikli said after Mr. Musk alleged that Mr. Soros “hates humanity” and was “doing things that erode the fabric of civilization."

Elon Musk accuses George Soros. Credit: Fox News

Mr. Chikli used the Musk controversy to revive debunked assertions, propagated by Mr. Netanyahu in 2018 at the height of Mr. Orban’s anti-Soros tirades, that the philanthropist worked with Iran. Mr. Orban has since likened Mr. Soros to The Godfather.

At the time, US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt warned that “irrespective of how one feels about George Soros’s politics or policies, it is entirely disingenuous to deny that many ad hominem attacks on him rely on classic antisemitic tropes and rhetoric.”

Ms. Lipstadt noted that “in bygone eras, the antisemites invoked the Rothschild family to advance their conspiracies about Jews. Today, they use Soros to do so.”

Mr. Soros is the most prominent Jew to have attracted Israel and the far-right’s wrath. So have groups like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an American Jewish group that opposes Israeli policies, and supports the vilified, anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and prominent Jewish intellectuals such as journalism professor and columnist Peter Beinart.

Pro-Israel group protests against Jewish Voice for Peace: Credit: Atlanta Israel Coalition

Targeting Jewish Voice and other Jews who favor recognition of Palestinian rights, Mr. Chikli had US university campuses in his vizier long before the Gaza war erupted.

“It is heartbreaking to see Jewish young people who concede their connections to their people and their heritage in order to connect to the latest fashionable movement that they are calling woke,” Mr. Chikli said.

Jewish Voice executive director Stephanie Fox warned recently that “The far-right is rising all around the world, and with it, a real and violent threat against Jewish people, but rather than talking about or working together to defeat fascism and injustice everywhere, western states are mis-defining antisemitism to justify ongoing genocide.”

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.