Netanyahu is exploiting antisemitism to build his dictatorial power

The far right will never be friends to the Jews

At the International Convention Centre in Jerusalem a major conference on combating antisemitism begins on 26 March.

Not before time, you might say. The Hamas massacres of 7 October, 2023, were the largest slaughter of Jewish civilians since the Nazis.

Security guards stand outside synagogues and Jewish schools. The conspiracy theories that fuel every tyrannical movement —whether from the left or the right —invariably imagine that a shadowy cabal of hook-nosed Jews lies behind the world’s ills.

So, yes, by all means, call a conference on antisemitism.

Except that this conference has been called by Benjamin Netanyahu. Inevitably, it is not an attack on dictatorship but an endorsement of dictatorial power and of anti-Muslim bigotry.

David Hirsh, the UK’s leading scholar of antisemitism, has returned his invitation. He is boycotting the event because:

“There are too many far-right speakers on the agenda who associate themselves with anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian movements: from Marine Le Pen’s RN in France; Milorad Dodik, President of Republika Srpska; Eduardo Bolsonaro from Brazil; Hungary’s Fidesz party; and others in the European Parliament group ‘Patriots for Europe’.”

Bernard-Henri Levy has followed suit.

I glanced down the list of speakers to understand their objections to the conference, and was dismayed to see Ayaan Hirsi Ali had agreed to take part.

When she was young, she was an inspirational figure in the struggle against Islamist extremism. Now she is going along with… well, let me give you one example from Hirsch’s list.

It includes Kinga Gál, who is such a powerbroker in Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party that Trump invited her to his inauguration. Any self-respecting person who knows the history of antisemitism would steer clear. For years now, Orbán has pandered to racist Hungarians by saying that he will save them from a conspiracy led by the Jewish financier George Soros.

Yup, that old line again.

At the weekend, Orbán was babbling like a fascist on the verge of a nervous breakdown. As demonstrators filled the streets of Budapest, he declared:

“The bugs have overwintered. We will dismantle the financial machine that has used corrupt dollars to buy politicians, judges, journalists, pseudo-NGOs and political activists. We will eliminate the entire shadow army.”

While Orbán fights his army of shadows, others gathering in Jerusalem blur the border between opposition to radical Islam and hatred of all Muslims regardless of their politics.

What, for instance, is Milorad Dodik doing there? He is the Bosnian Serb member of the country’s tripartite presidency. Dodik is a Serb ultra-nationalist and an ardent denier of the Serbian genocide of Bosnia’s Muslims in the 1990s.

As the Royal United Services Institute puts it: “He regularly insults the country’s majority Bosniak Muslim population by referring to them as ‘converts’ and a ‘servile nation’.”

How on earth can the current Israeli government condemn Holocaust denial while inviting such a man into their country? The only possible answer is that its members think the murder of Muslims doesn’t count. They wish to denounce the hatred of Jews and excuse the hatred of Muslims – and not only in the Balkans.

I know David Hirsh well. He is the academic director of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. He set up the Engage network to oppose anti-Jewish racism among left-leaning academics. You can hardly accuse him of being a woozy progressive or a woke apologist.

I therefore paid attention when he said of the Jerusalem conference:

“It is clear to me that anti-democratic thinking is fertile ground for antisemitism and that the best way to undermine antisemitism is to support democratic thinking, movements and states…Israel could listen more attentively to the advice of local Jewish communities and it should not offer the populist right, which has fascistic antisemitism in its heritage and amongst its support, an official Jewish stamp of approval.”

But, of course, Benjamin Netanyahu will not care about the fascistic leanings and conspiracy theories of other dictatorial leaders when he wants to be a dictatorial leader himself: a Jewish Putin; an Israeli Orbán.

As the conference organisers prepare to welcome the leaders of the West’s illiberal right, Netanyahu will be seeking to purge the director of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service.