Israel invited representatives of European far-right parties to an antisemitism conference held last week in Jerusalem. The decision sparked fierce debate. Many saw it as a sign of moral disorientation. How, they asked, could the Jewish state engage with political forces historically associated with exclusion, nationalism or illiberalism?

The reaction was understandable because the invitation collided with a deeply rooted narrative— that historically, Jews thrived in liberal democracies. Emancipation in Europe lifted Jews out of the ghetto, granted them civil rights, and opened to them the gates of universities, cultural life, science, technology and economic opportunity. Liberal freedom allowed Jews to become full subjects in their own right rather than tolerated outsiders. Political participation, wealth creation, and social mobility followed.

Even the Zionist project itself and the founding ethos of the State of Israel aligned with this worldview: autonomy of the individual, national self-determination and the belief that people should be free to shape their destiny. Jews were among the greatest beneficiaries of liberal democracy’s promise, particularly its protections for minorities.

And yet, something seems to have fundamentally changed.

Today, the liberal democratic framework that once protected Jews increasingly fails to do so. In several Western liberal democracies, anti-Jewish violence has surged while enforcement has weakened. Hate crimes go unpunished or are somehow rationalized. Antisemitism is reframed as political speech, cultural grievance or social protest. In the name of tolerance, authorities tolerate the intolerable. As a result, Jewish visibility has become risky. Wearing a kippah in cities like Malmö, Brussels, or parts of Paris induces anxiety, sometimes justified.

By contrast, in a number of so-called illiberal democracies—Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic—public order is enforced strictly. Antisemitic violence is not socially excused, and street-level intimidation is swiftly suppressed. These regimes may restrict certain civil liberties, concentrate power or display authoritarian tendencies, but they guarantee something many Jews lack elsewhere: basic physical security. In Budapest, Jews walk openly as Jews.

This is a dizzying paradox. Liberal democracies prioritize abstract freedoms but struggle to enforce boundaries. Illiberal states prioritize order and sovereignty, sometimes at the expense of pluralism. But they enforce red lines. For minorities, especially Jews, the question becomes brutally concrete: What matters more? Ideological purity or lived safety?

This does not mean that Jews have suddenly embraced illiberalism as an ideal. It means that reality has outpaced theory. The historical equation—liberalism equals Jewish security—no longer holds universally. Conditions that once made liberal democracies hospitable to Jews have eroded, eaten away by mass migration without integration, identity politics that reframe Jews as privileged rather than vulnerable and a moral relativism that obviates the very idea of protecting minorities.

Israel’s outreach to illiberal actors should not be read as moral blindness, but as strategic realism. Jews have learned throughout history to read power structures as they are, not as they are supposed to be. If the paradigm has shifted, Jewish political thinking must shift with it.

The uncomfortable question is no longer whether liberal democracy is morally superior. It is whether it is still capable of protecting Jews. And today, in too many places, the answer is no.

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