Israel’s International Conference on Combating Antisemitism, to be held in Jerusalem on March 26 and March 27, is aimed at sealing Israel’s partnership with Europe’s far-right politicians. While Israel has long flirted with these forces, this is the first time Israel has invited right-wing and fascistic European politicians to a national event.

Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Anti-Semitism, Amichai Chikli, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, is hosting the conference. Its key political speakers are right-wing ideologues, ultra-nationalists and neo-fascists, chiefly from the Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament. They include:

• Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s National Rally.
• Giorgia Meloni, prime minister of Italy and leader of the Fratelli d’Italia that openly traces its history to the fascist Mussolini regime.

• Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Hermann Tertsch of Spain’s Vox party, who is vice president of the Patriots for Europe. His father, an SA storm troops leader, was sent to Madrid as a diplomat of the Nazi state.
• MEP Charlie Weimers of the Sweden Democrats, who is vice chairman of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group.
• MEP Kinga Gál, of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party, whose leader Viktor Orban praised Hungary’s dictator Admiral Miklos Horthy, a collaborator of the Nazis in the extermination of more than half a million of Hungary’s Jews.

Argentinian President Javier Milei is also scheduled to speak at the event, which will be attended by MEP Marion Maréchal, granddaughter of National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, who promotes the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. Representatives from The Netherlands’ anti-Islam populist leader Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party will also take part.

Absent from the conference agenda is any discussion of right-wing antisemitism or neo-Nazi violence against Jews. Instead, it focuses on Israel’s central pre-occupation—opposition to Zionism and the criminal actions of the Israeli state which it brands as “left-wing antisemitism”. Topics include “Anti-Israel Bias in International Institutions”, “Antisemitism in the Palestinian Authority and the Muslim Brotherhood”, “Double Standards, from the Battlefield to the [International Criminal Court] ICC”, “Denial: Christian Zionism”, “Denial, from the Holocaust to October 7”, and “When Progressivism Turns Hostile: Antisemitism in Academic Discourse”.

Castigating all opposition to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza as antisemitism, the Israeli government is also fostering far-right anti-immigrant and Islamophobic rhetoric promoting a picture of Europe overrun by Muslims, with a discussion on “Radical Islamist Antisemitism”.

Attendees are offered a choice of guided tours to Gaza or “Judea and Samaria”, the biblical name for the occupied West Bank, for a “remarkable journey through the captivating communities” where they will be able to “delve into ancient biblical sites and gain a comprehensive understanding of the region’s strategic importance.”

That Israel, whose founding was defended with the claim that it would provide a refuge from fascism and antisemitism, is now welcoming and allying itself with fascists and antisemites is a source of extreme disquiet and revulsion among the masses around the world, as evidenced by the mass demonstrations and protests that have included many Jews.

It has forced some reactionary, pro-Zionist attendees, who fear this discredits their human rights credentials, to pull out.

These include French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, who was scheduled to deliver the keynote speech at the conference’s opening dinner; Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, the UK’s chief rabbi; David Hirsch, academic director and CEO of the London Centre for the Study of Antisemitism; and, from Germany, Felix Klein, its antisemitism czar, Volker Beck, president of the German-Israeli Association and Armin Laschet, a former candidate for the office of federal chancellor.

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the notorious Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in the US, perhaps the most well-known Zionist quasi-state intelligence agency, also felt the need to withdraw.

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, who was due to speak at the conference along with Netanyahu, has likewise pulled out.

Netanyahu’s Likud Party: Now an observer member of far-right Patriots for Europe

The invitation extended to far-right ideologues is only the latest episode in the increasingly open alliance between the Zionist state and resurgent forces of the far-right and neo-fascism in Europe and beyond. It comes as Netanyahu’s Likud Party became an observer member of the Patriots of Europe, the third largest group in the European Parliament, which includes the French National Rally, the Hungarian Freedom Party, the Belgian Vlaams Belang, the Dutch Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, the Austrian Freedom Party, the Italian Lega, the Spanish Vox and the Portuguese Chega. These are parties that Israel once boycotted because of their ties with the Nazis and antisemitism.

The Patriots, which held its inaugural conference in Madrid in February, “warmly” welcomed Likud as an observer, citing their “shared values”. Likud has effectively ended its membership of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group which it joined in 2016 when it was the leading right-wing group. It will now collaborate with the Patriots on their “shared priorities”, including “the fight against political Islam and the terrorism it fuels” and efforts to curb “the illegal mass migration to Europe”.

Earlier in February, Likud member and Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana and Yossi Dagan, another Likud member and settler leader, welcomed members of Vox to Jerusalem. Vox leader and president of the Patriots bloc Santiago Abascal has been a vocal supporter of Israel since October 7, as part of his broader campaign against “radical Islam”. He has condemned what he called the “global dictatorship” imposed by the United Nations and the International Criminal Court which has issued an arrest warrant for war crimes for Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who recently quit the opposition to rejoin Likud, has announced that Jerusalem would formally establish relations with the Sweden Democrats, Le Pen’s National Rally and Vox. Netanyahu’s adviser Ariel Bulshtein has been having open discussions with Austria’s Freedom Party that was founded by a former Nazi general and has many Nazi sympathizers in its leadership.

Likud has refused to comment on whether it will establish formal relations with the Freedom Party and Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD), but Diaspora Minister Chikli has indicated his willingness to establish relations with the AfD, saying its co-leader, Alice Weidel, is “easy to connect with” and has “a healthy liberal patriotism, responsible immigration policies, and a clear-eyed view of the dangers of radical Islam”.

Netanyahu offers rehabilitation to Europe’s neo-Nazis in return for their support for a Greater Israel

This is not a conference to combat antisemitism but to rally support for Israel’s expansionist policies, including its “final solution” of the Palestinian question.

Europe’s far-right parties are visiting Israel in a bid to whitewash their fascistic and antisemitic past by obtaining a kosher stamp of approval from Israel for the resurgence of military dictatorships and fascism. These Christian fundamentalists, anti-Semites and xenophobes—like their political antecedents—are also eager for their own Jewish citizens to emigrate to Israel.

Netanyahu is more than willing to politically rehabilitate fascism in Europe and around the world. For more than 25 years—as Israel’s moral standing in the world, including among Jews, has evaporated—he has campaigned to suppress anti-Zionism under the guise of combatting antisemitism.

He never ceases to insist that: “European antisemitism is the new anti-Semitism that comes from the extreme left and also the radical Islamic pockets in Europe”; “The idea that Israel doesn’t have a right to exist is the ultimate antisemitism today”; and that Israel has the right to “defend itself” by all necessary means against the Palestinians.

The conference also provides an opportunity for Israel to market its military hardware, repressive security surveillance technology and intelligence software—tried and tested on the Palestinians.

The increasingly reactionary ideology of Zionism

Israel’s alliance with the European and international far-right is one between political fellow travellers. Netanyahu embodies the emergence of a fascistic tendency within Israel. In 2018, his coalition of openly racist and fascistic parties introduced the “Nation-State Law” emulating apartheid South Africa. It enshrined Jewish supremacy as the legal foundation of the state.

In 2022, Netanyahu formed an electoral alliance with the openly fascist parties Religious Zionism and Jewish Power and brought them into his coalition government, giving them unprecedented power over the economy, the West Bank and the police. Even when he had the chance to dispense with their services after three opposition leaders joined his coalition after October 7, he kept them in office. They have played a key role in inciting violence and vigilante groups against the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, and promoting the war of annihilation in Gaza which they are determined to annex.

The dangerous “left-wing antisemitism” lie

Successive Netanyahu governments have funnelled millions of dollars to Zionist groups and pro-Israeli political figures to aid their efforts to criminalise the left. The most well-known campaign was that waged against Britain’s then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters, slandered as having transformed Labour into an antisemitic party. Corbyn was successfully removed—thanks to his refusal to oppose the witch-hunt of his supporters and drive out the pro-Zionist Blairites out of the Labour Party.

His replacement Sir Keir Starmer is a vicious right winger, notorious for his aiding and abetting Netanyahu’s war on Gaza with weaponry and daily intelligence support.

The focus on the supposed growth of “left-wing anti-Semitism” serves to cover up the cultivation and growth of far-right and neo-fascist forces by capitalist governments around the world. This shift to the right represents a violent realignment of politics with the reality of staggering levels of social inequality, economic crisis and war. Under these conditions, the ruling class in every country is seeking to do away with democracy, reflecting the brutal face of capitalism in a period of acute crisis.

The Netanyahu government is moving to dispense with all constraints on its powers and to get rid of its political opponents within the state apparatus—including the head of the domestic spy agency Ronen Bar, and Attorney-General Galia Beharav-Miara—in preparation for a broader crackdown on all opposition to its policies. The alliance of Israel’s political elite with the world’s most reactionary forces demonstrates that Zionism is a no less a bitter enemy of Jewish workers and youth, be they in the diaspora or in Israel, than it is of the Palestinians.