After last year’s government-sponsored International Conference on Combating Antisemitism sparked controversy for including far-right politicians, this year’s version was a more muted affair.

Right-wing politics were still on full display at the conference on Tuesday, with a colorful lineup of influencers, Israel advocates, and foreign politicians including some from the far right, and intellectuals associated with conservative movements from within Israel and around the world.

However, appearances by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Jewish Federations of North America President and CEO Eric Fingerhut, and other mainstream voices helped temper the mood at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center.

Ahead of last year’s event, several high-profile Jewish leaders backed out due to the inclusion of far-right European politicians. But this year, Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli made a point of working closely with Diaspora community leaders to avoid a repeat of the whirlwind of contention, sources told The Times of Israel.

Discussions still focused heavily on the threat posed by jihadist movements abroad, an emphasis of Europe’s far right, as well as the dangers posed by social media and right-wing and left-wing movements.

“This conference seeks to banish political correctness, call the child [antisemitism] by its true name, and mobilize all forces in the ideological and physical struggle against the heirs of the modern Nazis,” Chikli said in his welcome address. “This is not just the struggle of the Jewish people. This is the struggle of the free world against the imperialism and tyranny of radical Islam.”

Herzog opened the event, held on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, with a warning that antisemitism remains a potent and deadly force 81 years after six million Jews were killed in the Shoah.

“The Holocaust was the single greatest catastrophe in the........

© The Times of Israel