Netanyahu, Magyar and Foreign Internal Politics
“You need leaders who can protect you.” That was Benjamin Netanyahu’s “pitch” to Hungarian voters, made in a video posted January 16, 2026. Israel’s Prime Minister followed this with a specific endorsement: “Viktor Orban has these qualities in abundance”. Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli has made a habit of providing similar unsolicited endorsements in foreign elections, including Donald Trump in 2024, Jordan Bardella (National Rally candidate for Prime Minister of France), the same year and Pierre Poilievre for Prime Minister of Canada in 2025.
These endorsements were predicated on these candidates and their parties being opposed to Islamism, Hamas, and the ICC, while also supporting Israel and “Western civilization”. An Israeli desire to encourage an international strengthening of this vision is understandable. But explicit endorsements circulated publicly damage both Israel and Diaspora communities.
There has never been a shortage of narratives framing Diaspora Jewish communities as “fifth columns” serving Israeli political aims. Statements like Chikli’s only feed the conspiracy machine, endangering the communities themselves and compromising Israel’s diplomatic and security interests.
Staking reputational capital on an election outcome is a losing investment. If Israel’s favored candidate loses, it has now alienated a newly elected government before it even takes office. In some cases (Pedro Sanchez in Spain and Jean-Luc Melanchon in France), there is clearly no possibility of building a positive relationship with Israel based on shared interests. Endorsing their rivals was unlikely to cost Israel anything it had not already lost.
This is not always true. Bibi endorsed Orban in 2026. Yet there is little substantive difference between Orban and his ultimately victorious opponent Peter Magyar on the issues of greatest importance to Israel, specifically the threat of Islamism and the ideological capture of institutions of international law. Magyar was a member of Orban’s government that led the right-wing side of these debates in Europe in the 2010s. He has continued the Orban-era migration policies that counter EU migration norms. However, immediately following his victory this April, Magyar indicated a desire to stop using Hungary’s veto to protect Israel from EU sanctions and announced he would honour the ICC’s arrest warrant against Netanyahu. No one has publicly drawn an explicit connection. It seems more than likely some, at least, of Magyar’s newfound hostility to the Netanyahu government is due to Netanyahu’s breach of diplomatic norms by publicly intervening to oppose Magyar’s election.
But what happens when Israel’s preferred candidate wins? Netanyahu’s and Chikli’s explicit endorsements, and implicit ones of Spain’s Vox and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, went to parties that define themselves as populist and nationalist. Many promote a narrative of a shared civilizational struggle between Christian or Judeo-Christian societies and Islamist ones, but they are also deeply invested in exclusionary national projects. These parties and their voter bases reject being seen to be controlled by or acting on behalf of other countries, especially across clear cultural and religious divides. When these parties win, the Israeli endorsement becomes a potentially embarrassing mark of “foreign influence” prompting a need to publicly demonstrate distance.
Netanyahu and Chikli are mistaken in assuming nationalist voters are necessarily more supportive of Israel, or indeed Jewish security at home or abroad, simply because they are more likely to view Islam as a threat to their own national identity. There is little data to suggest the average National Rally voter in France is supportive of Jews or Israel. The same is true in Italy. Georgia Meloni and the current Netanyahu government were both elected in autumn 2022 and initially enjoyed a strongly supportive relationship. While Meloni has maintained a strongly anti-Islamist immigration policy, her government, yielding to public opinion pressures, has joined the EU’s condemnations and limited sanctions against Israel.
Poland’s case differs slightly but with the same likely outcome. The right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiJ) is explicitly anti-Islamist. It was among Europe’s most strongly anti-migrant during the migrancy crisis. However, polls now indicate that should the PiJ return to power in Parliament it would be dependent on a coalition with Grzegorsz Braun’s Confederation Party. Confederation is explicitly antisemitic and engages in Holocaust denial. Braun publicly labels the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, commemorated as national heroes, as “symbols of shame”. He frequently decries the “judaiziation of Poland”, refers to Gaza as the “Jewish genocide,” and identifies all Middle Eastern wars, the conflict in Ukraine, and global pandemics like COVID as the deliberate work of Israel and the Jewish Diaspora. Braun’s influence led the previous PiJ government to institute Poland’s law criminalizing discussion of Polish participation in the Nazi organized extermination program, a law Israel protested. On the other hand, Poland’s current centrist government led by Donald Tusk which includes leftist parties in its coalition has at times opposed EU condemnations of Israel and explicitly rejected the ICC arrest warrants of Netanyahu and Gallant. Yet Netanyahu’s government has largely opposed Tusk precisely for his leftist allies.
This failure to grasp the nuances and realities of specific national contexts has real consequences for Diaspora communities. Since many of them are perceived as a party to Israeli policy, such endorsements create complicated relations between these communities and their governments. Israeli intervention in domestic politics forces Jewish communities into public assertions of loyalty, including explicit repudiation of this “foreign interference”. In response to Netanyahu’s endorsement of the National Rally in France and various denunciations of Macron’s “failure to protect his Jewish community”, the rabbinate of France felt compelled to denounce Netanyahu and affirm its loyalty to France. That obligation blunted the rabbanites’ ability to advocate forcefully against the increasingly normalized antisemitic institutional and social climate in France.
Israeli government endorsements of candidates in foreign elections are unlikely to alter their outcomes, except perhaps to damage the endorsed party’s fortunes. They do undoubtedly create unnecessary tension between Israel and potential or existing allies at a time when Israel cannot afford to lose a single one. Equally importantly, such unwarranted intervention places Diaspora communities in an invidious position, weakening relationships with both their home governments and Israeli society. This Diaspora Jew, and graduate student in Political Science and International Relations, is consequently pleading with Israeli politicians who feel a need to comment on foreign elections. Do us all a service by doing the seemingly impossible: Keep quiet.
