Date → December 2023
From → Diaspora AllianceTo→ Stakeholders & Concerned Parties

Re→ Explainer: The Global Far Right and IsraelContents
Summary: The antisemetic global far right is becoming increasingly pro-Israel - and the Israeli
government is embracing its support.
Background
Key Arguments⁄

A. Antisemitism remains central to the worldview of the global far right⁄

B. Pro-Israel politics and antisemitism are not mutually exclusive⁄
C. Far-right Israeli leaders and public figures embrace their antisemitic and autocratic
counterparts, as part of an emboldened global far-right alliance.
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Summary
The rise of the global far right over the past 20 years has brought a dramatic upsurge in nationalist
and nativist policies, elected officials, and rhetoric, along with a resurgence in conspiracy theories.
Taken together, these trends have fed the re-proliferation of antisemitic speech and imagery inmainstream political discourse and online, revitalized by a wider backlash against immigrants,
Black people and people of color, LGBTQ people, and other minoritized groups. In the UnitedStates, this trend was significantly accelerated by the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump,which sparked unprecedented anti-Jewish violence and normalized a new generation of
Republican politicians who invoke antisemitic conspiracy theories and maintain ties to whitenationalist groups.
Yet Trump and the wider GOP, like political figures in other far-right governments and politicalparties, have consistently pointed to their Zionist credentials as an alibi. A growing current ofphilosemitism worldwide posits Jews as assumed — albeit subordinate — allies of Western andChristian hegemony under the framework of “Judeo-Christian values.” Within this framework,
Jews are presumed partners for Islamophobic discourse and policy. Central to the spread of thisphilosemitic Islamophobia is the idea that Jews need “protecting” from Muslims, and that suchprotection can best be advanced by these far-right actors. And the ongoing oppression ofPalestinians spurs this spread, as the Israeli government embraces numerous staples of far-rightideology: ethnonationalism, militarization and the need for securitized borders, Islamophobia, andauthoritarianism.
For their part, Israel’s leaders have tended to publicly embrace the notion that support for Israel
ipso facto eliminates concerns about antisemitism. Their endorsement of this notion corresponds
to Israel’s own foreign policy goals, focused on suppressing the Palestinian struggle, as well as theideological affinity between Israel’s leaders and far-right governments around the world. Israel has
been radicalizing rightward over the past few decades, as have many other countries, and serves
as a model ethnocratic state for right-wing populists elsewhere. These overlapping trends havecontributed to the creation of a powerful alliance — one that accelerates the threat of nationalist
violence while disavowing its dangerous consequences for diaspora Jews. This alliance also
insulates Israel from international criticism for its oppression of Palestinians, thereby serving
Israeli foreign policy goals.

BackgroundThe 21st century resurgence of the global far right has brought successive elections of leaders
around the world who have, implicitly and explicitly, circulated bigoted and conspiratorial ideas
about Jews. The reasons for these developments are many: increasing economic instability has

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driven the rise of populist leaders promising to solve the crisis by cracking down on immigration;an accompanying increase in the politics of nostalgia feeds into national grievance politics byvalorizing a non-specific earlier time when the hegemonic group more freely protected itsdominance; and, more recently, the rapid spread of dis- and misinformation, largely through social
media, has translated into real-world incitement, hate crimes, and lethal attacks, as well as
successful insurgent far-right election campaigns.
Amid these trends, antisemitism has remained an animating ideology across the global far right —whether expressed through dog-whistle references to Jewish power and money, Holocaust
revisionism, or policies and proposals that constrain Jewish expression in the public sphere.
Antisemitism is frequently a foundational part of right-wing conspiracy theories, interwoven withthe preservation of racial purity, “traditional” gender roles, and land and borders.
Unlike the far-right movements of the early part of the 20th century, however, those with similarviews today have an effective alibi for their prejudicial ideas about Jews: publicly supporting, andenacting policies sympathetic to, the state of Israel, including endorsement and adoption of theInternational Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism. Hungarian
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, for example, has stressed his support for Israel while igniting
antisemitic conspiracy theories in his own country. Rather than rejecting the overtures of Orbánand his ilk, Israeli leaders and public figures, most prominently Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, have actively embraced them — playing up their political and personal compatibility
while dismissing or deflecting accusations of their anti-Jewish rhetoric and policies.
Underlying these displays of amity are shared commitments to ethnonationalism, securitizedborders, hostility toward Islam, suspicion of Enlightenment humanism, and authoritariansuppression. Israeli leaders’ tacit acceptance of their far-right allies’ bigoted rhetoric about Jews
— and their political campaigns informed by such rhetoric — is also rooted in long-running efforts
to re-define antisemitism as criticism of Israel (see DA Explainer #1). What’s more, numerous
Israeli public figures over the years have emphasized their prioritization of Israeli nationalist
prerogatives over Jewish safety in the diaspora and amplified incendiary language about Jews.
These far-right ties serve Israel’s foreign policy goals by creating an alliance of states guaranteed
to insulate Israel’s oppression of Palestinians from international censure.

Key arguments
A.
Antisemitism remains central to the worldview of the global far right - including rulingparties

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While numerous far-right factions around the world deny their antisemitism, and/or claim to havedistanced themselves from their antisemitic origins, prejudiced and conspiratorial ideas about Jews
remain a core part of their worldview — even if expressed in coded terms.

Pg → 4 of 9⁄Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), which was founded in the post-World War II
period by former Nazis, maintains that it has disavowed its antisemitic past (whileremaining brazen about its Islamophobia and xenophobia). But its members continue toespouse antisemitic views, and it has been responsible for proposed guidelines
restricting the sale of kosher meat.

⁄The Republican Party in the United States has a growing swath of members, particularlyin the House of Representatives, who openly engage in antisemitic rhetoric, releaseantisemitic campaign materials, and consort with white nationalists — among them
former President Trump, former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, Arizona Rep.
Paul Gosar, and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Current and former GOP leaders
have claimed that the Democratic Party represents the prime antisemitic threat in U.S.
politics — mostly due to some of its progressive members’ criticisms of Israel.

⁄Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party in Hungary instituted a 2017 propaganda campaign against
the Hungarian-Jewish financier George Soros, evoking antisemitic canards about
Jewish control — on this occasion, to suggest that Soros was instrumental in bringing
immigrants to Hungary, a conspiracy theory that soon after spread to the United States,
where it was mainstreamed by members of the GOP. (The anti-Soros initiative wasmasterminded by a pair of American-Jewish political strategists who worked onelection campaigns for both Orbán and Netanyahu, among other far-right figures.)Orbán frequently uses antisemitic dog whistles in his speeches, while his government
has re-inserted antisemitic Hungarian figures and Holocaust revisionism into the publicsphere.
) Hungary has also modeled the philosemitism that is the flipside of contemporary
antisemitism, building a strong allyship with the Chabad movement — which, withits members being clearly identifiable as Jews, helps reinforce the distinction
between “us” (true Hungarians) and “them.”⁄

Germany’s Alternative for Germany party (AfD), one of whose branches has beenclassified as right-extremist by the state German intelligence agency, has a long trackrecord of members’ antisemitic statements and use of Nazi rhetoric, and has been
linked to rising far-right antisemitic rhetoric in the country. Its anti-immigrant,anti-Muslim platform is gaining in popularity across Germany as support for AfD surgesin polls.

|Diaspora)))///Alliance\Explainer: The Global Far Right and Israel⁄B.

Poland’s Law and Justice party, which until recently led the country, steadily advanced
Holocaust revisionism while in power, and came close to criminalizing discussion of thecountry’s complicity in the destruction of European Jewry — only backtracking andsoftening the proposed bill after significant opposition from the U.S. government. The
party promotes the “traditional family,” declaring its opposition to “LGBT ideology,” andis anti-immigrant and Islamophobic.
Pro-Israel sentiment and antisemitism are not mutually exclusive

While many far-right, antisemitic leaders tout their support of Israel as evidence of theiranti-antisemitism — a stance widely embraced by far-right Israeli leaders — pro-Israel policies andexpressions can often serve as cover for anti-Jewish ideology and policies.
⁄All the parties listed above have instituted pro-Israel policies and publicly proclaimed
their support for Israel:) The Trump administration moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem;
advanced the implementation of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, whichconflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism; and removed references to theIsraeli occupation in the State Department’s annual human rights report.
) Hungarian officials have blocked EU resolutions or statements critical of Israel,
while Orbán considers Netanyahu a close personal ally and Likud a natural partnerto Fidesz. Hungary’s then-representative to the IHRA, Szabolcs Takács, was theorganization’s chair the year it adopted its working definition of antisemitism.
) A 2017 poll of AfD (see above) members showed that the vast majority arepro-Israel, while most believe that anti-Zionism is antisemitism; that theEuropean Union should not label products from the Israeli settlements; and thatthe Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement is antisemitic.
) The head of Poland’s former ruling Law and Justice party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has
praised Israel while defining antisemitism in terms of criticism of the Jewish state.
The Polish government recently endorsed the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

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Argentinian President Javier Milei, a far-right provocateur who has proposed potentiallycatastrophic economic reforms, and whose rise is widely seen as threatening the rightsof women and LGBTQ people, is a vocal supporter of Israel who has promised to move
the Argentinian embassy to Jerusalem. Shortly after being elected in November 2023,
Milei, who has also downplayed the historical abuses of Argentina’s military
dictatorship, appointed a former youth member of a neo-Nazi group as the treasury’s|Diaspora)))///Alliance\Explainer: The Global Far Right and Israel

attorney general.
⁄Former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte positively compared himself to Hitler, andlater praised Israel’s “passion for peace” while on an official visit to Israel.

⁄Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has embraced antisemitic parties such as AfDand paraphrased Nazi slogans, as have members of his party; he also brought an Israeli
flag to his rallies and vowed to move the Brazilian embassy to Jerusalem (hisgovernment eventually reneged and opened a trade mission in the city, instead).

⁄India’s ruling party, the far-right BJP, has lauded a founding father of Hindu nationalism
who praised Hitler and Nazi policies as they were being enacted. BJP head and Indian
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a staunch ally of Israel, and in particular of Netanyahu.

⁄The rebranded Rassemblement National in France — formerly the Front National,
founded in 1972 by a motley far-right crew of Nazi collaborationists, reactionary
populists, and defenders of French Algeria — is rehabilitating its antisemitic image byclaiming to act as a “shield in the face of Islamist ideology,” portraying the far-rightparty as a fortress for French Jews in order to advance a radical anti-migrant andIslamophobic agenda, and touting its support for Israel.

C.
Far-right Israeli leaders embrace their antisemitic and autocratic counterparts as partof an emboldened global far-right allianceIsrael has increasingly allied with far-right and authoritarian regimes over the past two decades,from Hungary and Trump’s United States to India and Bolsonaro’s Brazil. The recent economic andarms-based alliances with autocratic regimes in the Middle East, under the auspices of the Abraham
Accords, is a discrete, but connected, offshoot of this trend.

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Israel has developed ties with right-wing, autocratic current and former leaders such as
Modi; Trump; Duterte; Orbán; Bolsonaro; and Russian President Vladimir Putin — all ofwhom have been warmly welcomed on official visits to Israel, including trips to YadVashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. (This is not a new phenomenon: in 1976,
South African Prime Minister John Vorster, who had been part of a pro-Nazi organization
during World War II, was invited on an official visit to Yad Vashem.)⁄Netanyahu has put on a united front with Polish and Lithuanian leaders who havestoked Holocaust revisionism, including tacitly endorsing the Polish law that
downplayed Poland’s role in the Holocaust.

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Likud has started to shift its position on historically neo-Nazi European parties,including the Sweden Democrats — which it had previously boycotted — on account ofthese parties’ growing warmth toward Israel. Part of this realignment rests on theparties’ shared Islamophobia.

⁄A number of Likud members, including at least one high-ranking official, MichaelKleiner, met with the antisemitic Romanian AUR party in November 2022, despite Israel
officially refusing to engage with the faction. Kleiner called accusations of antisemitism
against AUR “a blood libel.”⁄Netanyahu gave a noticeably delayed and evasive response to the antisemitic, whitenationalist marches in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 — reacting only after Trump had
responded and avoiding any assignment of responsibility for the events.

⁄Yishai Fleisher, an Israeli settler leader and spokesperson for the far-right JewishPower (Otzma Yehudit) party, has declared his admiration for Orbán while dismissing
concerns over the Hungarian PM’s antisemitism — arguing that “I am not looking atHungary as a Hungarian Jew or a Diaspora Jew, I’m looking at it as an Israeli Jew — afellow sovereign. And from this nationalalist [sic] perspective nation states must unite
against the globalist agenda which seeks to force open borders & erase nationalidentities.” Israel has joined in the campaign against Soros, as have prominent
members of the America-Jewish far right.

⁄

Netanyahu thanked Argentinian President Milei for his proposal to move the embassy toJerusalem and invited him to visit Israel, within days of Milei appointing a former youth
member of a neo-Nazi group to his government.

⁄These relationships between the Israeli government and its far-right counterparts arerooted in shared values around ethnonationalism and nativism, “secure’ borders,Islamophobia, and cracking down on civil liberties.

⁄Many of these relationships are also significantly informed by arms and economic deals,
with Israel exporting weapons, spyware, and other military and cyber tools to a litany ofrepressive regimes. The 2020 Abraham Accords between Israel on the one hand, andthe United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on the other, for example, were marketed as
U.S.-brokered “peace agreements” and as a leap forward in Jewish and Arab/Muslimcoexistence. In fact, the Accords represent an alliance between autocratic regimes
focused on promoting trade, technology, and arms deals. The Accords’ advocates insist
that the agreement also marks a crucial step in the fight against antisemitism; in reality,|Diaspora)))///Alliance\Explainer: The Global Far Right and Israel

however, this claim confuses international diplomacy with anti-antisemitism strategy,
thereby further misrepresenting the causes of, and fight against, antisemitism today.

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Resources

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Dahlia Scheindlin, Populist Nativism of the East, West, and Israel, Zentrum Liberale
Moderne, March 21, 2018⁄

Zeev Sternhell, Why Netanyahu Loves the European Far-Right, Foreign Policy, Feb. 24,2019⁄

Jelena Subotić, Antisemitism in the global populist international, The British Journal ofPolitics and International Relations, December 29, 2021⁄

Carole Schaeffer, Gods, Guns, and Country, Jewish Currents, July 30, 2019⁄

Peter Beinart, Antisemitic Zionists Aren’t a Contradiction in Terms, Jewish Currents,January 10, 2023⁄

Ksenia Svetlova, Unholy Alliance: Israel and the Far-Right in Europe, Talk delivered at theHijacking Memory conference, Berlin, June 12, 2022

⁄Natasha Roth-Rowland, How the antisemitic far right fell for Israel, +972 Magazine,
September 7, 2022

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