There’s this weird relationship between Jews and evangelical Christians in America.  The evangelicals are Zionists because they know that once all of the Jews are safely settled in Israel the Messiah will come and us Jews will all be converted.  It’s called milliennialism, and it’s a huge money-maker for organizations like AIPAC and the Zionist Organization of America.  Even though it’s uneasy and positively nauseating, the true Jewish hawks still maintain a relationship with evangelicals for political reasons.
 

A similar parallel is emerging with Israel’s right and European radical populist movements such as France’s Front National, Britain’s National Front and UK Independence Party, the Netherlands’ Dutch Party for Freedom, and believe me, the list goes on and on.  Post-9/11, these groups have gained increasing influence in local, regional, national, and EU legislatures, and they create formidable blocs.  We all remember the shock when Jean-Marie Le Pen advanced to the second round of the French presidential election in 2002, but the reality is that radical populism has become mainstream.
 

These parties are nationalist, white, anti-immigration, anti-Muslim, pro-law and order and they emphasize a return to traditional family values. They are extreme Romantics of the worst sort, xenophobes stuck in the rhetoric of the nineteenth century. The National Vanguard would be the American equivalent.
 

While not outwardly anti-Semitic, it is safe to say that radical populists are not so friendly to Jews. But the best part? They also love Israel.  As an article in Haaretz recently noted:
 

European populists like Israel.  They're on the fence about Jews.  They detest immigrants, the Muslims and Roma in particular.  Hungary’s Jobbik party, for example, “proposes to build permanent guarded internment camps for Roma.”  France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, recently deported a slew of Roma because their gypsy camps are illegal.  Not that it does anything, since Roma are EU citizens and can therefore go right back to France.  In the 1930s and 1940s European Jewry was in a similar position of being the scourge of Europe, but now the Jews are a model population for the Muslims because they’ve assimilated.
 

Enter politician and legislative representative Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom who has a most interesting visage (Google him for images, I promise you won’t be disappointed).  His “anti-Muslim polemics in march shot his PVV party to election success…where it is now the third largest parliamentary party.”  Member of Knesset Aryeh Eldad of the super-nationalist National Union party, however, has welcomed him with open arms.  Eldad either already hosted or will host a conference this month, and as Haaretz reported in November, he said that “‘Wilders supports the program and will present [to the conference] his view that establishing a Palestinian state on the Western bank of the River Jordan will pose an existential threat to Israel.’”  Even better, Wilders’ policies apparently include “introducing Israeli-type ‘administrative detention’ or arrest without trial, banning the building of mosques and suspending immigration of non-Western foreigners to the Netherlands, has in the past angered the Jordanian government with his Jordan-is-Palestine rhetoric and claims that Jerusalem is the “main front protecting the West” from Islam.”
 

The National Union party must seriously consider what seems like an impending alignment with European radical populists who love Israel because they hate Islam, and yet they also barely stand Jews.  I’m sure Wilders has colleagues all over Europe who would be happy to publicly echo his Jordan-is-Palestine idea.  Radical populists do not equate the Jewish People with Israel, which in post-modern theory is great, but in this context it’s very disturbing since they are essentially appropriating the Jews in their fight against Islam.  I really do wonder what Netanyahu thinks about all of this, and I hope he has taken notice.  More important, how can Israel’s right even stand to communicate with people like Wilders?  Is he the lesser of two evils?
 

We need to keep an eye on this budding relationship.  Israel truly is a country of failed ideologies if its hardcore Zionists are collaborating with the would-be fascists in Europe.
 
Allison Good blogs at http://awgood.wordpress.com.