By Rabbi Dow Marmur
JERUSALEM –Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is the leader of Israel’s Likud party. Currently, Heinz-Christian Strache, the head of Austria’s notoriously anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic Freedom Party, is visiting Israel as the invited guest of Likud. The prime minister is also the acting foreign minister. That ministry strongly objects to Strache’s visit and will have nothing to do with it. It even counselled former President Shimon Peres not to receive Strache.
This is probably not a case of political schizophrenia but of political weakness that borders on the pathetic. Even assuming that Netanyahu didn’t know that Strache was coming, which is in itself surprising that someone has been officially invited without the host knowing about it. But once he found out, he should have dismissed the senior members of his party who invited the unwelcome guest.
That would mean, however, that those censured wouldn’t vote for the government and the coalition would collapse. This brings one to the uncomfortable conclusion that staying in power is more important to Netanyahu than doing the right thing.
Another example: Several right-wing parliamentarians, including Likud Knesset members, have announced their intention to visit the Temple Mount in or around Pesach. This is likely to lead to Palestinian riots. Netanyahu has appealed to his colleagues to stay away. By all accounts, his call won’t be heeded. They’ll sacrifice Jewish and Arab lives at the altar of their warped ideology. They too should be dismissed, but that would break up the coalition, etc.
Strache’s visit is scandalous. The fact that he brought with him the Jewish member of his party, the pathetic David Laser, adds to the ignominy. And that their named hosts are prominent members of Israel’s leading political party suggests, as the journalist Liam Hoare has written in the Tablet, that they’re either naïve or “one has to suspect them of harboring rather sinister motives about which one dare not speculate.” He concludes that “either way, it’s indefensible.”
No less indefensible is the fact that Strache and his entourage made their way to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial, where they laid a wreath to tell us that they’re not really anti-Semitic, “only” anti-Muslim. They may not like Jews who’re alive, but are prepared to “honor” those who’ve been murdered by the Nazis. Perhaps the speculation in which Hoare doesn’t wish to engage is about the hosts’ contention that being anti-Muslim is good enough for them.
Hoare’s opening sentence in his report. It’s worth quoting: “It is a disgrace that a vile and contemptible figure as Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), should visit Israel on an El Al flight and tour Yad Vashem in the plain light of day, as he did Tuesday morning.”
Perhaps an even greater disgrace is that the party of Menachem Begin, who so passionately objected even to receiving reparations from the democratic post-Nazi German government, should now be hosting a man so often compared to the Nazis of the past and whose single “merit” is that he hates Muslims.
And the Prime Minister seems incapable of stopping it. He styles himself as the defender of the Jewish people, but at least in this case, he doesn’t appear to act on it.
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Rabbi Marmur is spiritual leader emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. Now residing in Israel, he may be contacted via dow.marmur@sdjewishworld.com. Comments intended for publication in the space below must be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the U.S.)