It may sound hard to believe today, but there was a time when a lot of people really liked Israel. Large groups of young Europeans, mostly from the Nordic countries, would come over to the Jewish state as volunteers, working on kibbutzim. Tourists would visit the country in their hundreds of thousands, the vast majority of them not Jewish.
All that completely changed in the decades following the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the rise of an increasingly right-wing and authoritarian Benjamin Netanyahu.
One cannot visit European capitals without noticing anti-Israel graffiti everywhere. And by “anti-Israel” I don’t mean slogans denouncing the policies of the current Israeli government. I saw the slogans like “Fuck Israel” and “Fuck Zionism” spray painted all over Brussels on a recent visit.
Israel seems more friendless now than at any time in its nearly 80 year history.
That’s why it makes sense for Israelis to welcome foreign politicians who don’t hate them, such as the current U.S. administration. Israel is utterly dependent on Donald Trump for its security and the current “Trump-mania,” which not all Israelis share, is understandable.
But there are other political leaders who show up at Ben Gurion Airport and who are greeted as honoured guests, despite not having much to offer. Sometimes these leaders, who come from the far Right, pose as great friends of the Jewish state. But just under the surface, it’s clear that these are no friends of the Jewish people.
Last week, Tommy Robinson was one such guest. In a column in Ha’aretz, a journalist wrote how on Saturday night he was attacked by Robinson’s thugs, “punched in the head, spat on, knocked to the ground and kicked, doused with beer and called a kapo– all for daring to stand up and shout that racists are not welcome in Israel.”
Robinson’s violently anti-immigrant demonstrations have sometimes included displays of Israeli flags. But this conceals an undercurrent of antisemitism among his supporters. While Robinson was in Israel, some of his own far-right comrades were being sentenced to years in prison for planning attacks both mosques and synagogues.
At the same time as Robinson was in Israel another guest was welcomed on a grander scale. This was Geka Geladze, a man most of you will never have come across. Geladze is the Georgian Minister of the Interior, part of the authoritarian “Georgian Dream” government. Geladze was in Israel as the guest of Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of the most extreme members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition. As the Georgian government described it, “the Georgian delegation will further visit various police units and learn on the ground about the specifics of their work.”
Lest anyone think that “Georgian Dream” is a party made up of friends of the Jewish people, one needs to be reminded of three words: “Global War Party”. In Georgian politics, the phrase has become notorious, used by the country’s current leadership to describe a secretive, all-powerful conspiracy that rules the world. That’s almost a textbook definition of modern antisemitism.
There are other examples. But the thought of Tommy Robinson’s thugs beating up Israeli journalists, or Georgian ministers learning from Ben-Gvir about dealing with civil unrest, it’s clear what’s going on.
The Netanyahu government has isolated Israel as never before. It’s not in a position to turn away new friends, even if those friends have racist and neo-Nazi supporters, or are spreading claims of a global conspiracy that reeks of Nazi propaganda.
There are rumours in Israel of new elections. They cannot come a moment too soon. And while any new government headed by the centre and left parties will have a very long to-do list, surely one item should be to tell Robinson and Geladze that they, and what they represent, are not welcome guests in a democratic Jewish state.
This article appears in this week’s issue of Solidarity.