If we look around the world today, some of the strongest supporters of Israel are unvarnished Jew haters. As a CNN investigation showed, the hooligans who attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA were not in their majority Jewish or Israeli — they were Trump supporters whose social media profiles were full of antisemitic memes about the Rothschilds controlling the world.
Let’s look at some examples:
Just a week after Donald Trump received a prize from the Zionist Organization of America for his steadfast support of Israel, he dined with the antisemite Kanye West and the Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
In France, Marine Le Pen’s party National Rally (RN) was founded by former Nazi collaborators — fascists who rounded up French Jews for genocide. But Le Pen supports Israel more than any other French politician does.
In Germany, the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) also has Nazi roots — their lead candidate in the European elections defended the SS, the organization that ran the extermination camps. The AfD is Germany’s most pro-Israel party.
In Italy, Giorga Meloni’s government supports Israel, while members of her party’s youth organization give fascist salutes and use antisemitic slurs.
Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who didn’t want his kids going to school with Jews, has called MAGA “the most pro-Israel group” in the country, while MAGA supporters commit mass murder in synagogues.
In Hungary, Viktor Orbán has organized campaigns against the Jewish billionaire George Soros employing classic antisemitic tropes: “We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world.” Orbán’s government is Israel’s closest ally in the European Council.
In his diaries, Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, noted that “the anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.” This was not an abstract thought: In mid-1903, Herzl went to St. Petersburg to meet with the Tsar’s minister Vyacheslav von Plehve, who was responsible for terrible pogroms against Jews. The two men agreed to encourage the emigration of Jews from Russia, as a way to keep Jews away from the revolutionary movements threatening the Tsar.
While it’s often argued that opponents of Israel are antisemitic, scientific research points in the opposite direction. As Peter Beinart notes in Jewish Currents, studies show that people who support Israel are actually more likely to agree with antisemitic statements such as: “Jews have too much influence in this country.” Pro-Israel countries tend to be anti-Jewish, and vice versa. It sounds contradictory, but it has a certain logic: Just like in the past, people who don’t like Jews are happy for them to be far away.
