Britain’s two main Jewish organizations publicly sparred Saturday night with Israel’s Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli, after the latter announced that he would be welcoming far-right anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson to Israel later this month and praised him as a “courageous leader.”
Robinson, born Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, has been imprisoned five times in the last 20 years for a range of offenses spanning from fraud and drug offenses to, most recently, libeling a 15-year-old Syrian refugee.
Chikli, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, announced on Friday that he had invited Robinson to visit Israel in response to the deadly terror attack at a synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur in which two Jews were killed.
“Tommy is a courageous leader on the front line against radical Islam,” Chikli said, heaping praise on the far-right rabble rouser.
“He has proven himself a true friend of Israel and the Jewish people, unafraid to speak the truth and confront hate,” lauded Chikli. “Together with friends like Tommy Robinson, we will build stronger bridges of solidarity, fight terror, and defend Western civilization and our shared values.
Robinson has accepted the invitation and announced he will visit Israel later this month.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, a communal Jewish organization founded in 1760, and the UK’s Jewish Leadership Council reacted to Chikli’s announcement with a joint statement describing Robinson as a “thug who represents the very worst of Britain.”
The statement added that “his presence undermines those genuinely working to tackle Islamist extremism and foster community cohesion.”
Rounding on Chikli, they declared that he had “proven himself to be a Diaspora Minister in name only.”
“In our darkest hour, he has ignored the views of the vast majority of British Jews, who utterly and consistently reject Robinson and everything he stands for,” they said.
Robinson, a former soccer hooligan, set up the English Defense League to protest against Islamic demonstrations in his hometown of Luton, but it soon attracted a far-right crowd as it became a nationwide movement. He has long campaigned against what he says are crimes committed by Muslim migrants.
He has assailed the Board of Deputies repeatedly in recent days in posts on X.
Chikli, who has clashed repeatedly with Jewish organizations abroad throughout his tenure, responded to the Board of Deputies by accusing it of having become a “political organization — openly aligned with left-wing, woke, pro-Palestinian parties.”
“Once proudly Zionist, now politically adrift,” he declared of the Board of Deputies, which represents hundreds of Jewish community bodies in the UK. “If only they showed the same energy attacking Britain’s recognition of a Palestinian terror state as they do attacking me and [Tommy Robinson].”
Contrary to Chikli’s assertion, the Board of Deputies consistently campaigned against UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s decision last month to recognize a Palestinian state at this stage, when Hamas and other Gazan terror groups are still holding 48 hostages.
Following Starmer’s announcement, the organization said there would be “deep dismay” across Britain’s Jewish community about “the way the UK has chosen to recognize a Palestinian state,” as it would ultimately do “nothing to advance a ceasefire, free the hostages, stop the suffering Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, or advance long-term peace.”
Chikli has worked to strengthen Israel’s relationship with Europe’s far-right parties, which Israel had long boycotted due to their ties to antisemitism and Nazism. This outspoken support has drawn condemnation from European countries.
In March, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and two German officials canceled their participation in an Israeli conference on combating antisemitism, organized by Chikli, after learning that a series of far-right European figures had been invited.
In December, Romania’s Ambassador to Israel condemned Chikli for holding a phone conversation with presidential candidate Calin Georgescu, who has praised Romanian leaders who oversaw the deaths of some 280,000 Jews during the Holocaust.
Last year, French President Emmanuel Macron complained to Netanyahu about Chikli after he publicly endorsed the presidential candidacy of National Rally’s Marine Le Pen in the country’s election.