An Israeli conference on antisemitism is falling apart…because they invited too many antisemites

Today, the Israeli government will begin hosting a two-day conference on antisemitism. Ironically the affair has begun to fall apart over charges too many people attending it are antisemites. 

This week’s conference is headed by Israel’s Diaspora Ministry, which is headed by Amichai Chikli (Likud). The conference titled “International Conference on Combating Antisemitism” is a culmination of Israel’s “Diaspora week”, but it is really meant to garner further support for Israel’s racist policies. Chikli defended Elon Musk last year when the latter attacked George Soros for “hating humanity” and comparing him to the X-Men comic book villain Magneto, who like Soros, is a Holocaust survivor. Now, the guest list for his antisemitism conference is generating so much controversy that even reactionary Zionists can’t support it. 

According to the Times of Israel these guests include: 

“The conference guest list includes controversial European right-wing politicians Jordan Bardella, president of the far-right French National Rally party founded by noted antisemite and Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen; Marion Marechal, a far-right French member of the European Parliament and Le Pen’s granddaughter; Hermann Tertsch, a far-right Spanish member of the European Parliament; Charlie Weimers of the far-right Sweden Democrats party; and Kinga Gál, of Hungary’s Fidesz party.”

This Who’s Who of the European far right has led some of Israel’s most notable defenders, such as Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, and others, to pull out of the event.

But a look back at Zionist history shows that such alliances are not unusual. In fact, Zionist leaders and the Israeli state have long harbored fascists and antisemites in their goal of settling Palestine.

The long history of Zionists collaborating with antisemites

While it might be surprising to some, the conference and its offensive guest list are not out of place within Zionist history. In fact, at the very dawn of Zionism itself, founder Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary that “the anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.” And this is indeed how history played out.   

Such alliances took place on various occasions throughout Zionist history, for various specific agendas. Such agendas included the “Transfer agreement” between the Zionist Yishuv (the Jewish polity in Palestine) in the years 1933-39, under which the 1937 Berlin meeting between Adolf Eichmann and the Jewish Zionist and Haganah agent Feivel Polkes took place. The meeting included a discussion of the possibility that the Nazis might supply weapons for the Zionist fight against the British Mandate in Palestine. The same year Eichmann visited Palestine, hosted by Polkes. 

Another example was when the Stern Gang (or LEHI, an offshoot of the Irgun, led by Yaakov Stern) attempted to forge an alliance with Nazi Germany in 1940-41. Their proposals to Hitler offered “active participation in the war on Germany’s side,” citing a “partnership of interests” between “the German worldview and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people.” They claimed that  “the establishment of the historical Jewish state on a totalitarian national basis, in an alliance relationship with the German Reich, is compatible with the preservation of German power.”

The Irgun and Stern Gang were both ideological descendants of Vladimir Jabotinsky and his “Iron Wall,” which is also the founding ideology of the Likud party. Leaders of these paramilitary groups, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, went on to become prime ministers of Israel. Of course, the current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is also an heir to this ideology. 

In the 1930s, Jabotinsky’s people trained in Italy under Mussolini, and his fascist government noted:  

“In agreement of all the relevant authorities it has been confirmed that the views and the political and social inclinations of the Revisionists are known and that they are absolutely in accordance with the fascist doctrine. Therefore, as our students they will bring the Italian and fascist culture to Palestine.”

Years later, alliances with far-right governments have only been strengthened by Netanyahu, who has thrown Jews and the history of Jewish persecution history under the bus. He did this when he whitewashed Hungarian President Victor Orban just as Orban praised Nazi collaborators and attacked George Soros with an antisemitic campaign, and when he helped Poland in its Holocaust-revisionist, ultra-nationalist attempt to whitewash its own Holocaust history. 

This history highlights how Zionists and antisemites have often found common political ground, precisely as Herzl had predicted. For the antisemites, the idea of the “Jewish State” represents something they can identify with – brute, ultra-nationalist power against a non-white oppressed population (dovetailing with their ultra-nationalist anti-immigrant policies), and Zionist approval has also been used to cleanse their own records – if the Jewish State blue-stamps them, they couldn’t be racist. 

Fascist embrace of the “new antisemitism”

This history of political convenience trajectory has also hinged on a concept that Israel has been pushing hard at least since the 1970s – “the new antisemitism”. 

The concept, in a nutshell, poses Israel as the “Jew among the nations”, and claims that whereas the “old antisemitism” was mostly against individual Jews or Jewish communities as such, it has now morphed into hate of Israel as a representation of Jews. The idea is a circular one and cannot be disproven, for even a factual critique of the state of Israel is ideologically suspected of being a racist targeting of Jews. This is the “trick” that the late Israeli minister Shulamit Aloni told Amy Goodman about in Democracy Now! in 2002: 

“Well, it’s a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country (USA) people are criticizing Israel, then they are antisemitic…. and that justifies everything we do to the Palestinians”. 

The notion of “the new antisemitism” is the one informing the notorious IHRA definition of antisemitism, which is being applied with increasing fervor internationally, to stifle and chill critique of Israel. 

But the flip side of this argument is that if a person, or political party, supports Israel then they cannot be antisemitic. This is why the Israeli government feels comfortable inviting known far-right political parties, with a history of anti-Jewish racism, to a conference on antisemitism. Because in the end, it is really about supporting Israel. 

Chikli says that he sees Europe’s far-right parties as “allies countering the rise of Muslim fundamentalism and antisemitism on the continent.” “Our goal was to invite friends of Israel from all over the political spectrum,” Chikli’s spokesperson said. “The way to reach people with different views than yours is to meet with them and discuss your differences, not to shut them out.”

Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy and major “new antisemitism” lobbyist, appeared to agree with him: “Those who continue to hold onto their antisemitic views obviously have no place in conferences against antisemitism. However, those who claim to have changed their views towards Jews certainly deserve to be heard,” he wrote on Facebook.

Of course, Israel will eventually whitewash them, there is just too much political capital there. 

Israel’s goal: legitimizing genocide

What the entire affair has made clear is that none of this is about antisemitism for real. Chikli’s goal is to fight those who criticize Israel. 

In his open letter to Pope Francis last December, Chikli slammed the Pope’s all-too-mild suggestion to study whether Israel was indeed committing genocide. Chikli brought up the Holocaust-card, and suggested that the Pope himself was engaging in Holocaust denial through “trivialization”: 

“As a people who lost six million of its sons and daughters in the Holocaust, we are particularly sensitive to the trivialization of the term ‘genocide’ — a trivialization that comes dangerously close to Holocaust denial.”

When you establish your “Jewish state” through the dispossession of Palestinians, your Zionism will eventually bring antisemitism full circle by strengthening the same forces that carried out your own historical persecution.

There’s no “new antisemitism.” Israel is just trying to build support for its own anti-Palestinian racism by exploiting the Jewish people’s own history of oppression. Maybe they will yet succeed in shooting themselves in the foot.