Israeli “loving” antisemitic right wing European parties

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Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party is keen to present itself as a dear friend and defender of Israel, and on October 7, 2023, the day of the Hamas-led assault against the Jewish state, it was quick to find comforting words for its supposed ally.

“We condemn the terrorist attacks in the strongest possible terms. Israel and the Jewish people have our full solidarity,” said Petr Bystron, then-foreign policy spokesperson for the party – and a man who Germany’s intelligence services have kept close tabs on due to his connections to right-wing extremists.

In 2020, AfD filed a motion in the Bundestag to “improve the relationship between the EU and Israel.” A year earlier, it had demanded that the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction movement be banned.

In reality, such statements are little more than a political charade in a party where antisemitism is a feature, not a bug. Leading members of the AfD have trivialized the horrors of Auschwitz, demanded a complete U-turn on Germany’s culture of remembrance, and embraced militant neo-Nazis as supporters, members, and even employees.

Their hollow statements supporting the Jewish state provide a form of plausible deniability, making them more savory, at least to some voters, as they have climbed to an unprecedented 18% in polls ahead of the next election in February, up from 10.4% in 2021.

The AfD is by no means an exception. Across Europe, extremist, far-right parties are eager to frame themselves as allies of Israel. But behind their symbolic phrases and staged solidarity lies a political calculation – one that only serves to support their own anti-Muslim and anti-migration agenda while detoxifying their political image, as even the far Right has realized that open antisemitism nowadays amounts to electoral suicide.

They portray Israel as the last bulwark to prevent the encroaching Islamization of Europe, a bastion of a “Judeo-Christian Occident” that, in reality, never was. But the Jewish state is only useful as long as it can serve racist projections to stigmatize migrants back home.

Confusing cynical agendas poses a danger
It is dangerous to confuse this cynical agenda with a genuine political alliance. Anti-migration rhetoric may be the visible tip of the ideological iceberg, but below the surface lurk the same old antisemitic beliefs of the past.

In France, Marine Le Pen has supported Israel in the wake of the Hamas-led attacks as a way to distance her party, National Rally, from its antisemitic past and as a road to power. She famously kicked out her father – Jean-Marie Le Pen – from the party in 2015. He has repeatedly downplayed the Shoah and been prosecuted under Holocaust denial legislation.

She even ditched the party’s previous name, National Front, a toxic brand that had become synonymous with jack-booted right-wing extremists. And a performative stance against antisemitism and in favor of Israel to court France’s Jews has been key to this strategy.

Marine Le Pen’s plan has partly worked, despite continued antisemitic comments from some party members, turning her and National Rally into serious contenders in elections and eating away at the once vast gulf between the French far-right and political acceptability. National Rally and its allies received the largest share of the popular vote in both rounds of the French legislative election this summer, and the party came first nationally in the European elections in June.

Even in Israel, Le Pen has her fans, with Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, who is, paradoxically, also in charge of combating antisemitism, saying she would be “excellent for Israel.”

In Sweden, the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), currently a de facto part of the ruling coalition, have said they want to be “friends” with Israel and are keen to boast about their pro-Israel voting record in the Swedish and European parliaments. But their solidarity with the Jewish state is also purely instrumental.

The party was founded by neo-Nazis and has called to ban non-medical circumcision and the import of kosher as well as halal meat. In 2022, an SD official was suspended after mocking Anne Frank. The party has also repeatedly attacked the Swedish Committee for Combating Antisemitism, an NGO that has criticized antisemitism within its ranks.

Again, praise has come from Chikli, who visited the Sweden Democrats in January, posing for a photo with its leader and writing on X/Twitter: “We deeply appreciate your support and your passion for our mutual fight for the future of Western civilization.”

And in Romania, after the far-right, pro-Russian Calin Georgescu won 24% of the vote in the first round of elections at the end of November, it was once again Chikli who cozied up to him on a phone call, with Georgescu reportedly promising to move Romania’s embassy to Jerusalem and not to respect the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Nevertheless, Georgescu has, in the past, praised early 1900s Romanian politician Corneliu Codreanu’s fascist Iron Guard, a violent organization considered by some to be even more antisemitic than Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP aka Nazi) calling them “national heroes.” He has also commended Ion Antonescu, the Romanian dictator who collaborated with the Nazis and was responsible for the murder of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.

Any alliance with these parties amounts to a Faustian pact: short-sighted, misguided, and, ultimately, fatal. It doesn’t take a relationship therapist to see: It’s definitely not a match.