Prominent Jewish figures boycott Israeli anti -Semitism event

Prominent figures, including several Jewish leaders, remained far from an international conference on anti -Semitism held in Jerusalem in protest of the inclusion of politicians from all over Europe related to the far right.

Those who refused to attend included their own President of Israel and the UK’s chief rabbi, Sir Ephram Mirvis.

At the conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a warning about the increase in anti -Semitism.

He said Europe is at risk of allowing anti -Semitism to remain unimaginable in a similar manner to the years leading to Nazi Holocaust.

“Rassy anti -Semitism is inciting a global war against the existence of Jews as a race that poisoned human societies,” his own father wrote in 1933, “Netanyahu said.

“Today,” we said, “we make a similar warning. The fate of free societies is bound by the desire to fight the scourge of anti -Semitism.”

But the inclusion in the event of representatives of the European far -right parties, such as the national rally of France, Spain VOX and Sweden DemocratsThey were proven contradictory.

The UK Government’s anti -Semitism adviser Lord Mann declined his invitation, saying, “There is nothing for the United Kingdom to learn about dealing with anti -Semitism from some of these characters.”

Chief Rabbi Mirvis declined to participate, “when he was familiar with the presence of a number of far -right populist politicians,” his service released last week said.

Israeli President Isaac Duke is also not present. He hosted his own separate event with Jewish leaders instead of what was regarded as a compromise.

The conference was organized by Amichi Kikli, the Minister of Diaspora’s questions of Israel and a candid member of the right -wing Likud Party in Netanyahu. Tatches over the last few months have been courting ties with far -right parties across Europe.

At the beginning of last year, he met with the Democratic leader in Sweden, who visited Jerusalem and was a speaker at a VOX conference in Madrid.

Chicks defended the inclusion of far -right politicians from Europe, saying that they have encountered “lies spread against them by those who slander the State of Israel around the world.”

Among those of the conference, whose presence caused some horror, was the president of the national rally Jordan Bardela, whose party was originally founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen, a man accused of anti-Semitism and found guilty of abandonment of the Holocaust.

Jean -Marie was expelled from the party – then he called the National Front – in 2015 by his daughter Marin because of his comments that the Holocaust is a “detail” of history. But after his death in January, she said she could not “forgive” it.

The 29 -year -old Bardela – a rising star from the French right – speaks on the stage where he acknowledged the “prominent symbolic meaning” of her invitation to Israel.

Until he explicitly refers to his party’s past, he vows for his future at Morne Le Pen, who leads the group in parliament.

“I would like to tell you in all the sincerity, through his positions, his proposals and his steadfastness to this threat, the national rally led by Marine Le Pen, is the best shield for the Jews of France,” he said.

“Ismism is totalitarianism of the 21st century,” he warned. “It threatens to destroy everything that is not like him,” sounding the claim, often made by his party, that France is facing an Islamist threat.

Bardela visited some of the places where Hamas carried out attacks on October 7, 2023, and the Memorial Institute of Israel’s Holocaust Nin Vashem.

The conference was also a reminder of how Israel was seen under the attack of parts of the international community. Panel discussions were held on topics, including “Addressing Anti-Israeli Biases in International Institutions”, “How does radical Islam nourish anti-Semitism in the West?” and “double standards, from the battlefield to the MHC”.

ICC – the International Criminal Court – issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Joab Gallant over the alleged war crimes against the Palestinians.

This move provoked outrage in Israel, which accused the ICC himself of being motivated by anti -Semitism.