There's an advantage to giving off toxic fumes: After having, by his mere presence, provoked the withdrawal of a majority of speakers, Jordan Bardella became, de facto, the star of a conference on anti-Semitism reduced to a gathering of members of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, European far-right parties aspiring to power or having left it, and influencers favorable to the policies of Benjamin Netanyahu's government. All the organizations representing the Jewish community, in Europe and around the world, kept away from the event, as did Israeli President Isaac Herzog. The Labor Party politician distanced himself as much as he could from an undertaking with which he was initially associated.
But when Bardella, the president of France's far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party, visited Jerusalem on Wednesday, March 26, and Thursday, March 27, he found what he was looking for: a "kosher stamp," in the words of Ariel Muzicant, president of the European Jewish Congress. Did he not shake hands with Israel's prime minister, like all the guests of honor seated in the front row of the conference? On Thursday morning, did he not meet the president of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, and enjoy a private tour of Yad Vashem, the memorial to the victims of the Holocaust?
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