Amichai Chikli, Diaspora Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, has invited Tommy Robinson, the fascist anti-Muslim demagogue who recently mobilized the largest far-right demonstration in British history, on an expenses paid, five-day visit to Israel.
Robinson’s trip will include meetings in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, with members of the government and with “representatives of other nations who maintain missions in Israel”, as well as visits to “Judea and Samaria” (the occupied West Bank), the Jabotinsky Institute and Yad Vashem, the national Holocaust remembrance centre in Jerusalem.
Tommy Robinson speaks during the Unite the Kingdom march and rally near Westminster, London, September 13, 2025 [AP Photo/Joanna Chan]
Israel’s invitation is to a partner in anti-Muslim hatred, cementing Tel Aviv’s open alliance with the resurgent forces of the far-right and neo-fascism. The fascist English Defence League which Robison co-founded, has close links with the outlawed Kahanist Jewish Defence League. At the “Unite the Kingdom” rally led by Robinson, Israeli flags were prominently displayed among the Union Jacks and St George’s Crosses.
Robinson, a violent provocateur who calls for the mass deportation of Muslims with his “send them home” slogan, has repeatedly described himself as a Zionist and said he would “fight for Israel in a war”. He has served five prison terms for violence, financial and immigration offences and faces another court appearance on Monday October 13. He has argued, “If Muslims have 55 nations, why can’t the Jews have one, especially their legitimate ancestral homeland?” It is these credentials which recommended a man who has served five prison terms for violence, financial and immigration offences—and who will be flying to Israel directly from another court appearance—to the Israeli government.
Saying he would be “proud to host” him, Chikli described “Tommy” as a “courageous leader on the front line against radical Islam,” adding, “Together with friends like Tommy Robinson, we will build stronger bridges of solidarity, fight terror, and defend Western civilization and our shared values.”
The invite has been repulsive to most Jews in Britain and is widely considered to have been a diplomatic blunder for associating Israel with such a political criminal. But the truth is that the crimes of Robinson’s hosts dwarf his own. He is a filthy provocateur and instigator of street violence against Muslims and asylum seekers. Israel is a state governed by mass murderers and pogromists, which Robinson looks on with undisguised admiration for doing what he can, as yet only dream of.
This left the Jewish Board of Deputies and Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) complaining pathetically that Robinson’s “presence undermines those genuinely working to tackle Islamist extremism [!] and foster community cohesion.”
Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer reiterated the words of the Board of Deputies and JLC, adding that they “have been crystal clear that that individual [Robinson] does not speak for them and he clearly does not speak for the decent, tolerant, patriotic majority of this country”. But he clearly speaks for Netanyahu and his government of Zionist criminals.
Former Conservative Foreign Secretary James Cleverley flew a little too close to the truth, when he said, “Tommy Robinson and others of his ilk are now wrapping themselves up in a pro-Jewish, pro-Israeli posture because basically, it’s an opportunity to do what they really want to do, which is to be anti-Muslim.”
A “pro-Israeli”, i.e., Zionist “posture” is today recognised by the far-right internationally as a way of legitimising their anti-Muslim agenda and proclaiming to the world, “See, this is what must be done!”
Chikli proved that Robinson was the perfect guest of his far-right state, describing the Board of Deputies which has been a leading participant in the witch-hunt of anti-Zionist, anti-genocide protesters as “openly aligned with left-wing, woke, pro-Palestinian parties.” He added, “If only they showed the same energy attacking Britain’s recognition of a Palestinian terror state as they do attacking me and [Tommy Robinson].”
Chikli in 2021 [Photo by תומר בן אבי – עמיחי שיקלי / CC BY-SA 4.0]
Robinson tweeted, “The people of Britain and the people of Israel share the same enemies and the same destiny,” continuing, “I come as a friend, as an ally, and as someone who believes that the strength of Israel is the strength of the West.”
Israel’s alliance with the far-right in Europe and beyond
The “dirty secret” the liberal Zionists seek to conceal is that Zionism has proved itself to be a far-right nationalist movement.
The Netanyahu government has long courted far-right politicians, invoking their common geostrategic interests, support for nationalism and opposition to Islam and Iran to rally support for Israel’s expansionist policies and its “final solution” of the Palestinian question.
In 2017, it welcomed US President Donald Trump and India’s Hindu Supremacist Narendra Modi to Israel, followed by Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban in 2018, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro in 2019 and Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini and Austria’s Sebastian Kurz in 2020.
Earlier this year, Netanyahu’s Likud party became an observer member of the far-right Patriots of Europe, the third largest group in the European parliament. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced that Jerusalem would formally establish relations with the Sweden Democrats, Le Pen’s National Rally and Spain’s Vox, while also having open discussions with Austria’s Nazi-sympathising Freedom Party.
Netanyahu also implicitly endorsed Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform Party, which is currently far ahead of all the other British parties in the polls, for its denunciation of the recognition of a Palestinian state. He remarked that in Israel, “we know to distinguish between the British people and their government.” Farage has pledged to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants from the UK, claiming that there are a growing number of Muslims “who do not subscribe to British values.”
Last March, Chikli hosted an International Conference on Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem whose key speakers were right-wing ideologues, ultra-nationalists and neo-fascists, including: Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s National Rally; Giorgia Meloni, prime minister of Italy and leader of the Fratelli d’Italia that traces its history to the fascist Mussolini regime; and Argentinian President Javier Milei.
So foul was this speakers list that many fellow reactionaries—Including French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy; Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, the UK’s chief rabbi; David Hirsch, academic director and CEO of the London Centre for the Study of Antisemitism; Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League in the US, Felix Klein, Germany’s antisemitism czar; Volker Beck, president of the German-Israeli Association; and Israel’s President Isaac Herzog—pulled out.
The “left-wing antisemitism” slander legitimizes a shift to the right
The conference focused not on right-wing antisemitism or neo-Nazi violence against Jews, but Israel’s central pre-occupation: opposition to Zionism and the criminal actions of the Israeli state that it slanders as “left-wing antisemitism”. Warnings of the growth of this “new antisemitism” among liberals, progressives and leftwingers are used to assemble a coalition of right-wing and outright fascist forces that use accusations of antisemitism to attack democratic rights and Muslims.
Successive governments have funnelled hundreds of millions of dollars to Zionist groups and pro-Israel politicians in a bid to outlaw the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and campaign against politicians opposing Israeli policies, including planning to “take down” UK MPs perceived as hostile to Israel, as the Al Jazeera documentary The Lobby revealed.
Pro-Zionist groups campaigned relentlessly against Jeremy Corbyn, Britain’s Labour Party leader from 2015 to 2020, and his supporters, who were slandered as antisemites. Thanks to Corbyn’s repeated political capitulations, this ended in his removal as leader, paving the way for Keir Starmer, a self-proclaimed Zionist to take the reins.
The fascistic logic of Zionism
The crimes against humanity of the Netanyahu government and its alliance with far-right and fascistic forces flow inexorably from the logic of the entire Zionist project.
The sun sets behind buildings that were destroyed during the Israeli ground and air operations in the northern Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, Friday, August 8, 2025. [AP Photo/Leo Correa]
When Zionism emerged in its modern form at the end of the 19th century, it was directed against the perspective of socialism, which had broad influence among Jewish workers and intellectuals. Socialism linked the eradication of antisemitism with the emancipation of the working class and the abolition of capitalism’s class-based society. Zionism countered the perspective of the liberation of the Jews through the solidarity of the international working class with the establishment of a Jewish nation-state.
But such a state was a reactionary dead end. The leading Zionists were always fully aware that they could only achieve their goal by expelling the Palestinian population and enlisting the support of one or other imperialist power. Vladimir Jabotinsky, one of the intellectual fathers of today’s rulers in Jerusalem, argued that a Jewish state in Palestine would act as a bulwark for British imperialism.
It was the defeat of the German working class, the rise of fascism and the Holocaust that gave Zionism, previously a fringe movement, the necessary support to put its plans into action. Israel emerged as an imperialist outpost in the Middle East and remains so today.
In his book The Logic of Zionism: From Nationalist Myth to the Gaza Genocide, David North wrote:
The establishment of the Zionist state was the direct result of the defeats suffered by the working class in the 1920s and 1930s due to the betrayals of Stalinism and social democracy. Without the mass of displaced persons, the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps, and without the political demoralization and loss of confidence in the perspective of socialism, the Zionist leaders would not have had the necessary numbers of people to wage a terrorist war against the Palestinian people, drive them from their homes and villages, and establish a Jewish nation-state by essentially criminal methods.
He explained:
The maintenance of a Jewish apartheid state, which violently suppresses the Palestinian people while at the same time moving internally towards fascism, is inextricably linked to Israel’s role as a linchpin of imperialism in the Middle East. As a massively armed garrison of US imperialism, it must be deployed in all wars instigated by Washington, with ultimately catastrophic consequences.
The crimes committed by the Zionists before the eyes of the world in Gaza and the West Bank have made Israel a pariah state, abhorred by the majority of humanity but admired by the far-right.
The much vaunted two-state solution would change nothing. Such a Palestinian mini-state, neither economically nor politically viable, would leave the Zionist state as an imperialist bastion and perpetuate the conflict with the Palestinians.
The only way out of this dead end is a secular, democratic Palestine in which Jews, Palestinians, and peoples of other ethnicities and religions can live together as equals. Such a Palestine can only be established on a socialist basis. It requires the unification of the working class and the oppressed masses of the Middle East in the struggle against the imperialist powers, the Zionist regime, and the feudal and bourgeois Arab rulers. It must be part of a federation of socialist republics throughout the Middle East and worldwide.
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