When the
South African prime minister John Vorster made a state visit to Israel in April
1976, it began with a tour of Yad Vashem, Israel’s major Holocaust memorial,
where the late Yitzhak Rabin invited the onetime Nazi collaborator, unabashed
racist and white supremacist to pay homage to Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

Compared, say, to routine outcries from organized Jewry over often even mild
whiffs of Holocaust controversy, no less remarkable was the bland equanimity
both Israeli and diaspora Jews also displayed toward the Vorster visit.

Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi recalls [The Israeli Connection, Random House: Toronto,
1987, p.x]:

“For
most Israelis, the Vorster visit was just another state visit by a foreign
leader. It did not draw much attention. Most Israelis did not even remember his
name, and did not see anything unusual, much less surreal in the scene [an old
Nazi diehard invited to ‘mourn’ the victims at a Holocaust memorial]: Vorster
was just another visiting dignitary being treated to the usual routine.”

The old
Nazi collaborator was graciously welcomed by his hosts. The South African
leader left Israel four days later — after signing a number of friendship
treaties between the Jewish state and South Africa’s racist, apartheid regime.
A denouement Leslie and Andrew Cockburn describe in Dangerous Liaison [Stoddart
Publishing: Toronto, 1991, pp. 299 – 300]:

This took place on Tuesday, 7.12.2010, just prior to their leaving for the Knesset. KGS Pictured are Marc Doll  of Germany’s Freedom Party Die Frieheit, Filip DeWinter  of Vlaams Belang, a Flemish far-right party, René Stadtkewitz  of Die Freiheit,  Heinz-Christian Strache leader of the neo-Nazi Austrian Freedom Party (FPO),  David Lasar (FPÖ); Haim Muehlstein (shady far-right Israeli settler/businessman); Eliezer “Cheetah” Cohen (a Likud MK);

Hans Christian Strache

Rabbi Nissim Zeev

René Stadtkewitz

David Lasar Jewish member of FPO

 “The
old Nazi sympathizer came away with bilateral agreements for commercial,
military, and nuclear cooperation that would become the basis for future relations
between the two countries.”

Leaving unmentioned Vorster’s wartime internment for supporting Germany,
Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, hailed the South African premier as a
force for freedom and made no mention of Vorster’s past as he toured the
Jerusalem memorial to the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. At a state
banquet, Rabin toasted “the ideals shared by Israel and South Africa: the
hopes for justice and peaceful coexistence”. Both countries, he said,
faced “foreign-inspired instability and recklessness“.

On Tuesday May 15th members of the Knesset met with mutual friends in the European parliament.  Israel’s delegation was led by Rabbi Nissim
Zeev of the Oriental Shas Party, who believes in setting up ‘treatment
centres’ for people who are gay and Lia Shemtov from Yisrael Beiteinu, another government
party.  Accompanying them was Gershon Mesika,
head of the Samaria Settlements Council and Professor Hillel Weiss, a man whose publisher describes how “in his
provocative and unconventional approach, challenges the very basic politically
correct terms such as human rights, democracy and racism.”

There to make up the numbers was David Ha’ivri of Israel’s
very own neo-Nazi party, Kach.  Haviri’s speciality is desecrating mosques as well as being an adviser and spokesman for
Mesika.
The conference was appropriately enough entitled “Peace in the Middle East.”  No doubt many Shaloms were said!  Also attending was Andreas Molzer of the neo-Nazi Austrian
Freedom Party (FPO).  Molzer has been instrumental
in creating a far- right block in the European Parliament, including within it the
Front Nationale and Belgium’s fascist Vlaams Belang.

Co-hosting the conference was Philip Claeys, an MEP for Vlaams Belang and
Fiorella Provera MEP of Italy’s Lega Nord. 
Provera is also busy organising another conference in northern Italy
next month entitled “The Secular State and Sharia Law in Western Democracies.”
Mesika, Zeev, Molzer et al are proposed speakers at the event.

Austria’s Jewish community was not happy with Molzer meeting with Israeli government politicians.
The chief rabbi, Paul Chaim Eisenberg, wrotea private letter 
to Nissim Zeev urging him not to attend and explaining why the FPO is a fascist
party.  Zeev not only ignored the letter but
he handed it over to Molzer!  And Zionists
object when one points out that collaboration with Nazis is not something new!

But Nissim Zeev isn’t an isolated far-right maverick.  Danny Danon and Ayoub Kara of Likud have
been keen to forge similar alliances and meet up with neo-Nazis and the European far-right.  Danon and Kara are not mavericks or fringe figures.  Kara is deputy minister for the development
of the Negev and the Galilee, and is close to Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu, while Danon is a deputy speaker of the Knesset and chairman of the
Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs.

Kara met in December with the leader of the FPO, Heinz-Christian Strache.  The head of Austria’s Jewish community, Ariel
Muzicant, wrote in a letter to Netanyahu that Kara had “stabbed Austrian Jews in the back.” 
It has to be said that this is pure naivety.  The sooner Europes Jewish communities come to terms with the fact that Zionism has always seen anti-Semitism as an
opportunity not a threat the safer they will be.  That
Jews do not belong in a diaspora and should live in Israel is one of the key
foundation stones of the Zionist movement.

Of course Kara and Strache share a hatred of Islam. Kara justified his
meeting with Strache on the grounds that his party was not anti-Semitic. They
are just anti-Islam!

Likewise far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders,
leader of the Freedom Party (these fascists love the title ‘Freedom Party’
whilst doing their best to snuff it out). Wilders was invited to Israel by Arye
Eldad of the National Union.  Previously
Wilder’s party played a significant part in the prohibition of Jewish ritual
slaughter of animals in The Netherlands.  It is difficult to ban
hallal meat and at the same time allow kosher meat.

And for any naive reader who believes that their main concern is cruelty to
animals, we should remember that the first legislative act directed against Germany’s
Jews was the banning of the slaughter of kosher meat in 1933.

‘The flirtation of the Israeli Right with xenophobic European politicians
causes difficulties for many Jewish communities in the Diaspora that are deeply
uncomfortable with anti-immigration policies. However, one would not expect
Eldad and like-minded politicians to dwell too much on the concerns of Diaspora
Jewry: After all, it has been an article of faith for many on the Israeli Right
that Jews belong in Israel and not in Europe.’ 
 

Kara has stated openly that since right-wing leaders are “fighting our
enemies, we should back them.” This is the basis of Anders Breivik’s manifesto claim
that Israel was a “frontline citadel” in the campaign against Islam. By their
friends shall ye know them!

As even the right-wing Jerusalem Post asks:   

‘What is
one to make of Danon’s foolish support for American broadcaster Glenn Beck, who
is not even an elected politician? This is a man who has alienated large
swathes of American Jewry with his unsophisticated attack on the US Reform
Movement. Danon’s support for Beck is based on his ardent support for Israeli
settlement of the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Is the Israeli settler movement
so desperate for friends that it needs Beck’s support? It is troubling that
Netanyahu has effectively acquiesced to the reckless activity of his Likud colleagues,
by his lack of leadership on this issue.’ 
 

 Lack of leadership is of course one description.  The other description is that Danon does what
Netanyahu would like to do.