My enemy’s enemy is my friend?

A generation ago it would have been unthinkable: the leader of a French far-right party — an organisation whose founders included former Nazi collaborators — invited to speak at an Israeli antisemitism conference in Jerusalem.

CNN reports that Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s National Rally, took that stage — a victory both symbolic and political for him, as Israel looks for new friends internationally.

What CNN describes

It is a reversal of political norms. Far-right leaders across Europe, seeking mainstream acceptance, are finding common cause with Israel in the demonisation of Muslims sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose party has long regarded itself as a natural ally of right-wing movements abroad, is giving his approval to a movement Jewish communities historically shunned.

The part that makes this most striking is the one CNN puts plainly: antisemitism remains a core ideology of most right-wing extremist movements, which have been behind some of the deadliest attacks on Jews in the West in recent years.

That is the contradiction worth sitting with. A political convergence built on hostility to Muslims does not make anyone safer — including the community in whose name the conference was convened.

Israel embraces France’s far right, turning a blind eye to its Nazi past — Joseph Ataman and Mick Krever, CNN, 26 March 2025.

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Shared by the South African Muslim Network (SAMNET).