Jews should not turn away friends who speak out against antisemitism, philanthropist and World Jewish Congress-Israel President Sylvan Adams said at the Israeli Diaspora Ministry’s International Conference on Combating Antisemitism on Thursday, which sparked controversy for including representatives of European nationalist parties.

Adams congratulated Israeli Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli for inviting “speakers from all political stripes” to Jerusalem. 

“We Jews need friends, and if members of the right or left dissociate themselves from and call out the antisemites, then I am happy they have agreed to come to Israel to publicly express their views,” Adams said. “Some of these parties will win elections in their respective countries, and their support for us will be enormously important.”

Adams also noted that many Jews voted for parties and leaders that may be controversial with large Jewish organizations, naming President Donald Trump as an example. He said that Jews should “engage in debate, not boycott,” offering to facilitate such conversations.

The Canadian-Israeli philanthropist also specifically thanked Jordan Bardella, a leader of the French far-right party the National Rally. “If you and Marine Le Pen stand up to defend our basic rights and freedoms, I am with you,” he said.

The National Rally, currently the largest party in the French National Assembly, was formerly called the National Front. It was established by Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was repeatedly accused of Holocaust denial and racial incitement. His daughter, Marine Le Pen, took over in 2012, and began a process of moderation, though some Jewish community leaders remain skeptical that the party has substantively changed.

Bardella gave a speech at the conference in which he said he was grateful to be invited because he is “aware of the symbolic significance.” 

“Since Oct. 7 [2023] in particular, France and Europe are witnessing a deadly honeymoon between Islamists and the far left,” Bardella said. “One provides the fanatics, the other institutionalizes the evil … We have to face anti-Jewish action head on … We have a solemn commitment in France to fight antisemitism everywhere at all times in all of its forms, whether from radical Islamists and the far left or the far right and their delirious plots. None of this hatred has any place in France or Europe.” 

Bardella linked “the rise of Islamism, resurgence of antisemitism and the migratory phenomenon tearing apart all Western societies,” and said that the “National Rally is the best shield for the Jews in France.” 

In contrast with his party’s founder, Bardella noted that he visited Yad Vashem and spoke of “the unspeakable horrors” of the Holocaust.

Several high-profile figures dropped out of Chikli’s conference, including Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, British antisemitism scholar David Hirsh and French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, as well as German antisemitism envoy Felix Klein and head of the Germany-Israel Friendship Association, German Volker Beck.

Some of those who declined to attend Thursday’s event took part in an alternative conference held by President Isaac Herzog the day before, which Chikli also attended.

When Hirsch announced that he was withdrawing from the Diaspora Ministry conference, he wrote that Israel “must be disciplined in keeping some distance from those who do not share its values. Israel could listen more attentively to the advice of local Jewish communities and it should not offer the populist right, which has fascistic antisemitism in its heritage and amongst its support, an official Jewish stamp of approval.” 

Among the right-wing figures who took part in the conference were Marion Marechal, also of the National Rally; Kinga Gal, Hermann Tertsch and Sebastiaan Stoteler, leaders of the Patriots for Europe bloc in the European parliament; and Charlie Weimers and Richard Jomshof, representatives of the Sweden Democrats Party.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a brief, oblique reference to the controversy about the conference in his remarks there, saying that he “welcome[s] all those from across the political spectrum, be they from the left or from the right, who realize that antisemitism is intrinsically evil and that it threatens their own future. I salute you for coming to Jerusalem.”

At the same time, Netanyahu dedicated most of his speech to condemning the “vilification of Israel, the Jewish people, and Western values [that] has been propagated by a systemic alliance between the ultra-progressive left and radical Islam.” 

Netanyahu said he “can’t believe” the demonstrations on global college campuses, including his alma mater MIT, supporting “these murderers, these rapists, these mass killers” of Hamas, and thanked Trump for fighting campus antisemitism in the U.S.

Also at the conference was Milorad Dodik, president of the Republika Srpska, a semiautonomous entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina populated by Serbs. While Dodik was in Israel, a Bosnian court convicted him of “an attack on the constitutional order” in that he violated a court order against leaving the country while he was on trial for separatist activities. The government of Bosnia and Herzegovina asked Interpol to issue a red notice that would call on countries worldwide to arrest Dodik. 

Dodik participated in a roundtable discussion in the early hours of the conference and then departed, leading some Hebrew media to report he had been asked to leave. However, Jewish Insider spotted Dodik several hours later attending Netanyahu’s speech.