Making sense of Israel's strange bedfellows
Things are getting weird. Israel is aligning with the European Far Right and its Sunni Arab neighbors. The global political order is shifting. Israel needs to tread carefully.
The world is becoming distinctly odd. Israel is embracing the European Far Right and befriending its Sunni Arab neighbors. Arab states have been trying to destroy Israel from before it was even created, while the last time Jews and the European Right met was the Holocaust.
It is part of a great global political re-alignment. To make the most of this world in flux, Israel must remember that normative foreign policies are a luxury that small states do not get to enjoy, and certainly not ones with so many enemies. Israel will need to be nimble, transactional, and place its own interests above all else.
Israel’s new friends in Europe and the Middle East are just one of many oddities. Traditional rivals Iran and Russia are working together, as are the Philippines and Japan. Germany and Japan are re-arming seriously for the first time since World War Two, and the West supports this. China and Russia are trying match US hegemony, while China is gaining dominance over Russia and pulling in into its orbit.
It is hard to know where to start an analysis, but two points are useful: the end of the Cold War in 1991, and the start of World War Three, which may or may not yet have happened.
When the Cold War ended, the West had a few decades of self-indulgent gloating. However, authoritarian China has since emerged as the US’ pacing threat, while Russia, having failed at democracy, returned to its authoritarian ways and Soviet imperialist ambitions. Various Jihadist groups, many of which the West backed against the Soviet Union, have ambitions of destroying Israel and imposing a Caliphate in the Middle East and the West (for starters).
Reeling from decades of failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US has lost some of its defense deterrence credibility. The Western liberal world order is crumbling, but it is not clear what will replace it. Amid this uncertainty, loyalties and allegiances are shifting as countries prepare for the next big global war. It is creating some odd bedfellows.
In Europe, governments’ refusal over many years to listen to voter concerns about high immigration levels, specifically from Muslim countries, has created a backlash After Hamas’ October 7 pogrom against Israel, Islamist mobs in Europe supporting Hamas revealed extent to which Islamists have infiltrated Europe. Many Europeans are rightly spooked about how their societies are changing.
The backlash has begun in the form of the return of Far Right across much of Europe. While this change is about more than concerns about Islamism, that is an important part of it.
Voters in the Netherlands expressed this fear most clearly when they voted to make anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party the biggest in the Dutch Parliament. No one was more surprised than Wilders himself. It is unlikely he would have done so well had Hamas not attacked Israel. However, the Dutch elections were just weeks after the October 7 attack, which showed voters the danger of Islamism.
The Far Right’s concern about Islamism gives them common cause with Israel, which is fighting Iran-backed Islamist terror groups and proxies on many fronts. This creates an odd pairing. It was Europe’s Nazi Far Right, in some cases the predecessors of today’s parties, that conducted the Holocaust.
However, real politics is back. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Israeli Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli visited Hungary in March and noted that it was the safest place in Europe for Jews due to its sensible immigration policy, by which he meant not taking in Muslim immigrants. Hungary is a country with a dark anti-Semitic past; its President Viktor Orban has autocratic tendencies, and is close to Russian dictator Vladamir Putin.
It is unclear to what extent Europe’s Far Right has detoxified itself from their Nazi and Vichy pasts, but they see befriending Israel as in their interests and as a tool to help them do so. Such parties can point to their support for Israel as proof that they are not the anti-Semitic parties of Europe 70 years ago. Famed French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld has even said that Marine Le Pen’s Far-Right National Rally poses less danger to Jews than the Far-Left New Popular Front, which is about to be in a French coalition government.
For Israel, facing increasing diplomatic isolation from its war with Hamas, a racist and corrupt United Nations (UN), and many anti-Semitic governments globally, working with the European Right gives them a diplomatic fillip in Europe. The more Europe turns Right, the more international support Israel will enjoy. It is a strange world indeed.
While there are risks attached to befriending Far Right parties and governments, it is right for Israel to do so because they are on the same side in a civilizational struggle between the West and Islamism. At least, the Right are not in denial about this civilizational contest. Israel must offset these risks by being highly transactional in its diplomacy to ensure it is getting rewarded for the risks involved.
Israel is reaping diplomatic dividends. The Netherlands’ Wilders has said, “Israel is fighting for its existence. Against the forces of hate, barbarism and terrorism. No Israeli wants unnecessary civilians to be killed. But Hamas needs to be eliminated. We have to fully support Israel and the Jewish people!”
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whom the unimaginative Western media touted as the country’s most right-wing leader since Benito Mussolini but who has so far governed as a traditional conservative, said “recognition (of a Palestinian state) can’t be requested unilaterally. The precondition is the recognition of the right of existence of the Jewish state and of the right of its citizens to live in peace and security.”
Argentinian President Javier Milei’s office issued a statement saying, “The Argentine Republic recognizes the right of nation-states to defend themselves, and emphatically supports the State of Israel in the defense of its sovereignty, especially against regimes that promote terror and seek the destruction of Western civilization.”
Even Sweden, which in 2014 was the first country to recognize a Palestinian state, now has a more right-wing government and consequently, a more pro-Israel position. This is partly due to fears about radical Islam, which is a threat in Sweden as seen by the unkempt Jihadist mobs that descended on Malmo earlier this year to pro
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