The Western Right and Israel

Rhodes Napier

In my previous article on the conflict in Gaza, I explored how Israeli-American 'resettlement programs' could be emulated by the European right in dealing with the continent's respective migrant diasporas. Multilateral resettlement, while far from a new idea, has been given a new lease of life by the diplomatic machinations of Likud and its Washington allies, and could see Palestinians scattered into far flung countries like Libya, Morocco and Somaliland. Likewise, I suggested that leveraging political and economic clout with willing third parties in Africa could provide a solution for the question of where to deport diasporics to, as opposed to trying to coax countries like Pakistan into accepting paltry numbers of returnees.

Of course, as I made clear in the article, this was not an evaluative endorsement of Israel's plan. We can imitate neutral or even hostile foreign state actors when they engage in policies of national self-interest. Israel's engineered exodus of Palestinians, which seems to (as I predicted) incrementally going ahead is likely to be directly detrimental to our continent's welfare. A variety of Israeli political figures, from the rabid Kahanist Itamar Ben-Gvir to 'centrist' opposition Yesh Atid lawmaker Ram Ben-Barak, have supported Western Europe as a legitimate destination for displaced Palestinians. Mike Huckabee, the American ambassador to Israel, has suggested that a new Palestinian state could be established in the Riviera . And of course, France's judiciary and indeed our own, are bizarrely willing to become accomplices to this grand project of displacement.

Netanyahu is pushing for a 'humanitarian' camp city on the ruins of Rafah, which, as documents from the pro-displacement Gaza Humanitarian Foundation indicate, is a temporary holding place for Palestinians to be transported to territorial third parties. No doubt this city will be governed by willing Zionist Harkis. Of course the irony of Israel's ham-fisted offensive into Gaza has been it basic failure to achieve its ostensible strategic objectives of freeing all hostages as well as decisively eliminating Hamas as a military force, none of which has been achieved. The destruction and piecemeal reconstruction of Gaza will occur over the course of years and decades, and will be periodically interrupted by insurgent remnants. It will also occur in tandem with a wider project of Israeli irredentism, in which the settlement of the West Bank is accelerated and the Palestinian Authority, corrupt and under the senile leadership of Mohammad Abbas, will be gradually dismantled. In effect the clock is being set back to the status quo ante of the Oslo Peace Accords.

What should the Occidental right's reaction to all this be? I have my own views, which I will expound upon shortly, but its worth historically contextualising right wing attitudes towards Zionism. There has been an essential ambiguity in nationalist discourses, which can be divided into roughly three strands. Many welcomed the establishment of a territorial Jewish entity in historical Palestine. Strangely enough, Ttere were currents of this within the early populist antisemitism of Central Europe, such as Karl Lueger's calls for Jews to go to Palestine as well as the Nazis, as exemplified by the erstwhile cooperation of the Haavara Agreement. This was also the view of many Mosleyite post-war Europeanist organisations, which called for the deportation of Jews to the nascent Israeli state.

Others have seen the Israeli state as a 'western' outpost in an Oriental and fanatically predisposed Middle East, providing a bulwark against pan-Arab socialism (and more latterly Islamic fundamentalism). Ironically, the post-WW2 Action Francaise adopted this position, which we see echoes of in the Vichy apologist Eric Zemmour's pro-Zionist position. Elements within the decolonial era French right's willingness to support Israel were partly influenced by the early set-to with the Islamic world's participation in the revolt against European rule. White minoritarian governments' strategic cooperation with Israel, particularly in the sphere of nuclear development, can also be viewed through the same lens of 'pan-colonial solidarity'.