Israel hosts British anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson

At a time when Israel finds itself increasingly isolated and vilified on the world stage, one of the world’s best-known political campaigners landed at Ben-Gurion International Airport on Wednesday for a 10-day solidarity visit facilitated by the government in Jerusalem.

The visitor is Tommy Robinson, a vocal anti-immigration activist in the United Kingdom with 1.7 million followers on X and a record of drawing massive crowds—most recently, a rally of about 250,000 supporters in central London.

His visit, hosted by Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli, is exposing Robinson’s large online following to Israel’s perspective. But it has also unleashed criticism from major British Jewish organizations, including the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which cite Robinson’s inflammatory rhetoric, checkered past and criminal convictions as reasons the invitation is misguided.

The episode highlights Israel’s growing readiness to court controversial foreign allies in its fight for global legitimacy—and the resulting friction with mainstream Jewish groups abroad, which view such outreach as self-defeating and morally compromising.

Robinson, 42, began his adult life as an aircraft engineering apprentice at Luton Airport before being jailed for assaulting an off-duty police officer in 2005. Over time, he emerged as one of Britain’s loudest voices against Muslim immigration. “I’m just opposed to Islam,” he said in a 2016 interview. “I believe it’s backward and fascist. The current refugee crisis has nothing to do with refugees. It’s a Muslim invasion.”

A longtime admirer of Israel, Robinson first visited in 2016 and intensified his pro-Israel advocacy after Oct. 7, 2023. “I came to Israel because it’s fighting our fight against radical Islam,” he told JNS on Thursday. “Here, Muslims know not to harass others because Israel won’t tolerate jihadism. That’s peace through strength.”

In a June podcast, Robinson rejected claims that Israel is an apartheid state: “It’s a democracy surrounded by totalitarian, Sharia-driven states. How are you supposed to deal with that?” He has also cited Hamas’s charter, which calls for killing all Jews, as evidence that Israel faces an existential threat.

Robinson has also spoken out against antisemitic violence and rhetoric, which official data show come largely and disproportionately from people with Muslim ancestry. Noting in a recent interview that the King David Jewish School in Manchester looks like “a military fortress,” he asked the interviewer: “Why does it have to be like that to send children to school?”

On Sept. 13, he led a massive rally in London where a pastor tore up Palestinian and Islamic State flags onstage to the cheers of tens of thousands chanting Robinson’s name. The event was emblematic of his movement’s blend of populism, nationalism and defiance of liberal norms.

In Britain, Robinson remains best known for campaigning on behalf of white victims of Muslim grooming gangs—criminal networks that exploited girls for sex, mainly in the 1990s and the 2010s, while authorities allegedly looked the other way to avoid accusations of racism.

When it comes to Israel, Robinson’s support has been consistent at a time when even many conservatives have accused Israel of disproportionate use of force or worse.

Nonetheless, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, a centrist umbrella organization, condemned the visit, calling Robinson “a thug” who represents “the very worst of Britain.” It accused Chikli of “ignoring the views of the vast majority of British Jews,” adding that hosting Robinson shows he is “a Diaspora minister in name only.”

Chikli defended the invitation, telling JNS it came after “about one year in which we assessed Tommy’s record on Israel and generally.” The conclusion, he said: “He’s a true friend of Israel and the Jewish people. Not only is he a legitimate interlocutor, but a British patriot and a courageous person.”

He dismissed the Board of Deputies as “irrelevant,” pointing to its past boycotts of right-wing Israeli politicians and its personal criticism of him.

Chikli has made outreach to nontraditional allies a hallmark of his tenure. Since taking office in December 2022, he lifted Israel’s longstanding ban on contact with Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, a right-wing party still shunned by France’s main Jewish umbrella group, CRIF.

The National Jewish Assembly (NJA), a center-right British-Jewish group that is critical of the Board, stopped short of criticizing Chikli for inviting Robinson. But some of its members, too, have reservations about him, according to the NJA’s advisory board chairman, Gary Mond.

“It’s not appropriate for any Jewish group, be it the Board or the NJA, to criticize the Israeli government for its invitations,” Mond told JNS, noting that Robinson is not a politician but a private citizen. Mond said he found Chikli to be “an excellent Diaspora affairs minister.”

Asked to assess Robinson’s record as a political figure independently of the visit to Israel, Mond expressed deep reservations.

“Looking at Tommy Robinson as a political figure, I’m appalled by his record, including his criminal activity in the past and political associations today, even,” Mond told JNS. He added that Robinson “is not a person I would associate myself with” but “that said, I and many other British Jews find ourselves in agreement with what he [Robinson] says about Israel and Jewish matters.”

Whereas many British Jews utterly reject Robinson and his message, a growing number of British Jews support both wholeheartedly, Mond added. Mond argued in favor of “making a distinction between the person and his views. I have reservations about the former and agree with the latter.”

Robinson’s critics, including conservative columnist Melanie Phillips, have pointed to his past membership in the British National Party—widely viewed as neo-Nazi—along with a history of violence and intimidation. Robinson left the BNP a year after joining, which he did without fully understanding the group’s nature, he has said.

“His personal history displays recurrent violence, incitement and contempt for the rule of law,” Phillips wrote in an Oct. 5 Substack post, calling his invitation to Israel “a very stupid and dangerous mistake.”

Robinson was found by a court in 2021 to have harassed a journalist investigating his alleged misuse of donations, falsely branding the journalist’s partner a pedophile. Robinson has said he was a victim of a campaign by Britain’s liberal press and judiciary to silence critics of Muslim immigration.

“These were attempts to silence me—and they didn’t work,” Robinson told JNS. “The same goes for Israel. The efforts to vilify it for standing up to radical Islam will also fail. We’re witnessing a change.”

© JNS