Israel and Europe’s Rights: Allies or interests? 

October 7 did not create the forces now reshaping Europe’s political landscape. The particles were already in the air. It accelerated them, polarized them, and sometimes violently drove them apart. Since then, parties belonging to Europe’s New Right, long kept at arm’s length by Israel, have become possible interlocutors. But have they truly become Israel’s allies? Or do their interests simply coincide with Israel’s? Behind this rapprochement lie Islamism, immigration, antisemitism, and a deeper transformation of European societies.

October 7 as a Particle Accelerator

October 7, 2023 did not create antisemitism, Islamism, or Europe’s difficulties with immigration and integration.

All of these already existed.

But the massacre perpetrated by Hamas suddenly set in motion phenomena that until then had largely been developing along parallel tracks. Since October 7, the European Commission has documented a sharp rise in hateful incidents and violence targeting Jews and has described antisemitism in Europe as reaching levels unprecedented since the founding of the European Union.

The phenomenon is all the more significant because antisemitic manifestations began immediately after the attack, before the subsequent war in Gaza could plausibly account for their scale.

October 7 therefore appears less as the origin of a phenomenon than as its revealer and accelerator.

The particles were already in the air. October 7 set them in motion.

It also polarized them.

Israel, Gaza, Hamas, European Jews, Islamism, immigration, and integration suddenly found themselves at the center of a confrontation whose dividing lines no longer correspond neatly to the traditional boundaries between Right and Left.

There Is No Longer Just One Antisemitism

European antisemitism was long associated primarily with radical nationalism, fascist movements, and parts of the far Right.

That antisemitism has not disappeared.

But it is no longer alone.

Antisemitic expressions can now be found in several ideological environments: the traditional far Right, radical Islamism, conspiracy-minded circles, but also certain sectors of the radical Left, where anti-Zionism can sometimes reproduce, in different language, traditional mechanisms of antisemitism.

Two simplifications must therefore be rejected.

Antisemitism has not moved from Right to Left.

But professed antifascism is no guarantee of immunity from antisemitism either.

Above all, October 7 revealed that different forms of antisemitism can flourish simultaneously in political worlds that fiercely oppose one another.

It was at precisely this moment that parts of Europe’s New Right began fundamentally changing their relationship with Israel.

Palmerston and the Permanence of Interests

A formula nearly two centuries old has acquired remarkable relevance.

On March 1, 1848, Lord Palmerston told the British House of Commons:

“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

What followed is perhaps even more interesting. When other countries followed the same course and pursued the same objectives, Palmerston explained, Britain regarded them as friends “for the moment.”

Why should Israel be exempt from this rule?

For decades, Jerusalem kept several European political parties at a distance because of their history, ideological origins, or statements by some of their leaders.

After October 7, the criteria evolved.

In March 2025, appearing before the Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs, a representative of Israel’s Foreign Ministry explained that the parameters governing contacts with foreign political parties had been updated after October 7.

Two criteria had been added: condemnation of the October 7 attack and Hamas, and a positive attitude toward Israel’s security needs.

The change is considerable.

Israel no longer asks a European political party only:

Where do you come from?

It also asks:

Where do you stand today?

The past has not been erased. But the present now weighs more heavily.

Islamism: The Real Point of Convergence?

This is probably one of the keys to understanding the realignment.

Europe’s New Right may not have become dramatically more pro-Israel.

It has, above all, become much more resolutely anti-Islamist.

The distinction is fundamental.

For Israel, radical Islamism is first and foremost a strategic, terrorist, and military threat: Hamas, Hezbollah, jihadist organizations, and networks supported notably by Iran.

For Europe’s New Right, the issue is primarily domestic: radicalization, communal separatism, security, integration, and challenges to certain norms of European societies.

The situations are obviously not identical.

But they reveal a common adversary.

Israel consequently appears to these movements as a state on the front line of a confrontation whose manifestations they believe they can also identify within their own countries.

The rapprochement with Israel then becomes less mysterious.

It does not necessarily reflect a sudden enthusiasm for Israel or Zionism. It may simply be the consequence of converging interests.

That convergence also leads these parties to fight antisemitism more vigorously when it comes from Islamist environments.

Supporting Israel against Hamas while ignoring antisemitism directed at Jews at home would be politically difficult to reconcile.

None of this gives these parties a certificate of good conduct.

Fighting Islamist antisemitism erases neither history nor prejudices that may persist within their own ranks.

Immigration as the Underlying Factor

Behind Islamism inevitably lies another question: immigration.

In financial terminology, one might call it the underlying.

Illegal or irregular immigration, but also legal immigration perceived as imposed when part of the population believes the state no longer sufficiently controls its scale or the conditions of integration, has become one of Europe’s major political fault lines.

One distinction, however, is indispensable:

Immigration, Islam, and Islamism are not synonymous.

Confusing the three would lead precisely to the error we are trying to analyze.

The tensions also run in several directions. In 2024, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights reported that 47 percent of Muslims surveyed in thirteen EU countries said they had experienced racial discrimination during the previous five years, compared with 39 percent in the earlier survey.

Europe therefore faces several realities simultaneously: concerns about immigration and integration, discrimination experienced by some Muslim populations, and the presence of Islamist currents that cannot be equated with European Muslims as a whole.

It is in this particularly sensitive political space that the New Right has gained ground.

Here it confronts parts of the radical Left across an almost opposite fault line: migration policy, borders, integration, attitudes toward Islamism and, since October 7, attitudes toward Israel.

Demographic change inevitably alters societies and, over time, their electorates. But to infer from this a general strategy of encouraging immigration in order to create future voters would go beyond what the evidence establishes. The question may be asked; it cannot be presented as a conclusion.

New Interlocutors for Israel

France’s National Rally provides one of the most striking examples of this evolution.

The history of the National Front and Jean-Marie Le Pen’s statements had long made this political family unacceptable to much of French Jewry as well as to Israel.

Marine Le Pen and later Jordan Bardella undertook to break with that legacy. The discourse on antisemitism changed, support for Israel became more explicit, and opposition to Islamism moved to the center of the party’s message.

Jordan Bardella’s invitation to the international conference on antisemitism held in Jerusalem in March 2025 would have been almost unimaginable only a few years earlier.

In Austria, the Freedom Party, or FPÖ, is following a comparable trajectory despite a history that rules out any form of amnesia.

Germany, however, demonstrates the limits of this evolution. The AfD expresses support for Israel and strongly denounces Islamist antisemitism, but statements by some of its officials regarding the Nazi past continue to constitute a major obstacle to full normalization.

These examples ultimately point to the same conclusion:

Support for Israel matters more than it once did. But it does not erase history.

Israel Is Not a Certificate of Respectability

For a political movement whose history includes antisemitic traditions, being received in Jerusalem carries extraordinary symbolic power.

The temptation might be to conclude:

How can you still accuse us of antisemitism when the Jewish state itself receives us?

That reasoning would be dangerous.

A party can support Israel for strategic reasons while retaining individuals or traditions within its ranks that are antisemitic.

But the opposite mistake would be equally serious.

A movement rooted in an antifascist tradition cannot invoke its history as a permanent certificate of virtue when antisemitism appears within its own ranks.

Neither friendship with Israel nor proclaimed antifascism removes the obligation to examine the facts.

Israel and European Jews: Interests That Are Not Identical

One final distinction is essential.

Israel defends Israel’s interests.

That is the normal function of a state.

European Jewish communities defend their security and their future within the societies in which they live.

Their interests may converge with Israel’s. They are not necessarily identical.

For Jerusalem, a European party that clearly supports Israel against Hamas may become a useful partner.

For Jews living in that country, the assessment may be different. They must also consider the party’s history, activists, behavior, and attitude toward minorities.

A party can therefore become acceptable in Jerusalem without automatically becoming acceptable to all Jews in Paris, Vienna, or Berlin.

That is one of the paradoxes of the current realignment.

Allies — Really?

October 7 did not create the forces now transforming Europe’s political landscape.

The particles were already in the air.

It accelerated them, polarized them, and sometimes violently drove them apart.

The New Right is moving closer to Israel. Parts of the radical Left are moving further away. Islamism and immigration are becoming major political fault lines. Different forms of antisemitism are emerging simultaneously in opposing political camps.

Israel finds itself at the center of this realignment without necessarily being its cause.

And Palmerston perhaps reminds us of what matters most.

Europe’s New Right has not necessarily become Israel’s ally. Its interests simply coincide more closely with Israel’s today.

Perhaps these movements have become less pro-Israel than resolutely anti-Islamist.

Their rapprochement with Israel and their fight against certain contemporary forms of antisemitism stem, at least in part, from that convergence.

This is not necessarily an alliance of values.

It is a convergence of interests.

And it will last only as long as those interests continue to converge.

“For the moment,” Palmerston might have added.

Perhaps that “for the moment” best explains the new relationship between Israel and Europe’s New Right.

–

References

European Commission, Combating antisemitism and progress report on the EU Strategy on combating antisemitism.

Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs, March 2025: new Israeli Foreign Ministry criteria governing relations with foreign political parties after October 7.

British House of Commons, Hansard, March 1, 1848: Lord Palmerston on “eternal allies,” “perpetual enemies,” and friends “for the moment.”

European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), Being Muslim in the EU, 2024.