It’s an observation that says as much about the evolution of a significant proportion of the member states of the European Union as it does about what Israel is becoming. The far right is establishing itself as the most unconditional supporter of the country, an evolution not called into question by the carnage perpetrated in Gaza following the Hamas massacres of Israeli civilians.
In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom signed a coalition agreement with three other parties on May 15. Wilders succeeded in inserting into this agreement an “examination” of moving the Dutch embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – a complete break with the European position that Jerusalem’s status must be decided by negotiation.
Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain’s far-right Vox party, voiced his opposition to his country’s recognition of the Palestinian state on May 28, when he met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – vehemently opposed to recognition – in Jerusalem. On the same day, Marion Maréchal, lead candidate of the French far-right Reconquête! party in the European elections, said that recognizing such a state now would be tantamount to creating “an Islamist state, with all the dangers that this could represent for Israel and for the West in general.”
A bygone era
For a long time, political movements whose roots could be traced back to the dark hours of the Second World War and the Holocaust kept Israel at a distance. The assessment of the European Parliament’s ninth term by the European Coalition for Israel – an influential group founded in 2004 – demonstrated just how far this was a bygone era. The 20 parties whose votes were most favorable to Israel all belonged to the far right and eurosceptics, mainly European Conservatives and Reformists. The top three were Vox, a Czech party and the Sweden Democrats.
A combination of circumstances explains the crumbling of this barrier. After a long time being on the fringes, far-right parties came to believe that a radical change in their discourse on Israel could break down an electoral lock in their quest for power. This was notably the case for the Sweden Democrats, who triumphed in the 2022 legislative elections, and whose founding members had been active four decades earlier in the ranks of the Nordic Realm Party, a neo-Nazi fringe group.
The Rassemblement National (RN) made the same calculation in France, distancing itself from the anti-Semitism of Jean-Marie Le Pen (founder of the RN’s predecessor) as well as from the positions of members of the student organization Groupe Union Défense (GUD), then close to Marine Le Pen, who in their time chanted “Deauville, Sentier, occupied territories” or “In Paris like Gaza, Intifada.” Also stemming from this new approach is the RN’s May 21 breakup with its ally Alternative for Germany (AfD), following remarks by an AfD leader playing down Nazism.
You have 45.23% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.