The marriage between the Israeli government and European parties that demonise Muslims in the same way the far-right groups nurtured hatred for the Jews is no coincidence
Social media photo showing Geert Wilders meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog in March 2024
David Hearst writes in Middle East Eye 21 June 2024
The next generation of political leaders in what we continue, fondly, to call western democracy is clear for all to see.
It has energy, charisma and speaks a language everyone can understand. It connects with an electorate neglected by today’s elite, has strategic patience and plans for the election after the next.
It’s also clear about what it thinks. It believes that “western civilisation” is threatened by Islam, and the “native populations” are threatened by migrants. It subscribes to the clash of civilisations and the great replacement theory.
And it’s vocificerally, if not physically, pro-Israel.
I use inverted commas because even in recent history the concept of a “Judeo-Christian” civilisation is nonsense.
No one in 16th century England nor Germany in the 1930s would have dared talk about a “Judeo-Christian” civilisation for the simple reason that Christians were the main persecutors of Jews.
But truth does not stop good propaganda.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was interviewed on French television recently, he was asked whether anyone could compare, as he had just done, the allied landing at Normandy to Israel’s attack on Gaza.
Netanyahu replied in French. “Our victory is your victory! It’s the victory of Judeo-Christian civilisation over barbarism. It is the victory of France! If we win here, you win here,” he told TF1.
The fact that a major French commercial channel gave a platform to a man awaiting an arrest warrant for war crimes produced a large demonstration in Paris.
But looks should not deceive.
More than political expediency
Netanyahu’s framing of his assault on Gaza in terms the Crusaders would understand is shared by large sections of the French political spectrum, and everyone, not least President Emanuel Macron, has played in these waters.
It’s a short step from criminalising what Macron speciously called “Islamist separatism” to targeting the freedom of religious worship of six million Muslim French citizens itself.
The links contemporary Israel is nurturing with the far right in Europe go deeper than mere political expediency
But no one profits more from the collapse of liberalism under Macron than Jordan Bardella, the poster boy of the far right, and the man tipped one day to become prime minister. “Go for a walk in all the neighbourhoods where I lived in Seine-Saint-Denis,” he said in 2021, speaking of “a demographic sea change” which could “alter the face of France in a few years”.
It’s a grave mistake to cast Israel’s embrace of Bardella, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom (PVV), Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain’s far-right Vox party, and the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AFD), as mere political opportunism.
True, there was much schadenfreude in Israel at the success of the far right in the recent European parliamentary elections. They saw it as a pay back for Spain, Ireland, Norway and Slovenia recognising a Palestinian state.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz tweeted a meme – in English and Spanish – of Spain’s leaders with egg on their faces, claiming they had been “punished by voters” for recognising Palestinian statehood.
“The Spanish people have punished @sanchezcastejon and @Yolanda_Diaz_coalition with a resounding defeat in the elections. It turns out that embracing Hamas murderers and rapists doesn’t pay off,” Katz wrote.
Amichai Chikli, former member of the far-right Yamina formation and now Israel’s diaspora affairs minister, crowed at the resignation of Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.
De Croo had gone to Rafah last November before the first hostage release and had been almost a lone voice in Europe in denouncing the slaughter of civilians in Gaza. “Supporting terror doesn’t resonate with the Belgian people,” Chikli said.
That said, the links contemporary Israel is nurturing with the far right in Europe go deeper than mere political expediency. It’s more than just “myopic rejoicing” as one Haaretz columnist put it.
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