When a minister mistakes impulse for strategy, everyone else pays the price.
Israel is already fighting a global war of legitimacy, a war of images and narratives in which every word, gesture, and handshake carries consequences.
Into that storm, Amichai Chikli decided not just to welcome Tommy Robinson but to extend an official invitation, turning a private visit into a public endorsement. He commandeered the trip, stamped it with the seal of the Israeli government, and in doing so, created the appearance of a direct alliance between one of Britain’s most divisive figures and the State of Israel. That is not diplomacy. That is self-sabotage.
Truth teller or provocateur?
Tommy Robinson is not a mystery. He sits at the epicenter of one of the most volatile domestic conflicts in British politics. He is a man simultaneously hailed as a truth-teller and condemned as a provocateur, a figure whose presence ignites tribal warfare across the UK.
Whether you like him or not, whether you think he speaks truth or poison, it should be obvious to any adult observer of politics that he is Britain’s third rail. Israel, drowning in diplomatic quicksand, had no business grabbing it with both hands.
Chikli’s decision to publicly align the Israeli government with Robinson is not brave. It is not even ideological. It is reckless. Whether he acted on bad advice, without advice, or out of some illusory instinct that he imagines is strategic intuition, his actions have triggered a public diplomacy crisis inside an existing national crisis. He has compounded Israel’s vulnerability at the exact moment it could least afford another self-inflicted wound.
Risk assessment
The result isn’t just embarrassment. It is institutional failure. There are ministries that make mistakes and learn from them, and then there are ministries that lack the basic procedural sanity to stop disasters before they start. The Diaspora Affairs Ministry, under Chikli, appears to belong to the latter category. The very existence of this fiasco proves that no serious risk assessment, consultation process, or chain of accountability exists. No one said, “Wait.” No one said, “Think.” No one asked, “What will this do to British Jews?” That silence is its own indictment.
In response to the backlash, Robinson has lashed out at “left-wing open borders liberal Jews” and declared the Israeli government “conservative,” aligning it with his own political brand. In one stroke, Chikli has managed to validate every lazy headline and every hostile narrative that equates Israeli conservatism with European far Right populism. He has handed Israel’s critics a gift that will be repeated endlessly: Israel welcomes the far Right and turns on liberal Jews. It is the perfect propaganda loop, constructed by the minister who is supposed to defend Israel against exactly this kind of distortion.
This is not an isolated mistake. It is part of a pattern. Earlier this year, Chikli hosted an “international conference against antisemitism” in Jerusalem, inviting senior figures from Europe’s far Right parties — politicians whose careers were built on nativist populism and thinly veiled hostility to minorities. The invitations, announced in February, sparked an immediate backlash.
Historical antisemitism
Leading Jewish organizations, international envoys, and antisemitism experts boycotted the event, warning that Chikli was legitimizing the very forces that have historically fueled antisemitism. That episode should have been a wake-up call. Instead, it became a dress rehearsal for this one.
Both incidents follow the same formula: a headline that flatters Chikli’s ego, a scandal that undermines Israel’s credibility, and a diplomatic clean-up operation left to others. He has learned nothing and listens to no one. The same failure of judgment, the same blindness to optics, the same inability to distinguish between strategic engagement and reckless provocation. It is not bad luck. It is incompetence elevated to principle.
This pattern tells us three things about Chikli:
• He is not from the Diaspora and cannot understand the Diaspora. He does not understand what it means to live as a Jew in the West, to balance particularity and acceptance, to hold one’s head high while keeping one’s footing. Diaspora Jews live in a constant negotiation between belonging and difference. To drop Robinson into that fragile equilibrium is to detonate a social and psychological landmine.
• He has no functioning dialogue with the Diaspora he claims to represent. The fact that he could formalize Robinson’s visit without consulting the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council, or even a handful of community figures is not arrogance; it is negligence.
• He does not have a professional team or infrastructure capable of filtering ideas through reality. This is not a ministry; it is a megaphone attached to a minister’s impulse.
The trap is now total. If Israel rescinds the invitation, it alienates a controversial but influential ally and looks weak. If it does not rescind it, it alienates countless allies across the Jewish world and entrenches the image of Israel as reckless and morally confused. It is a Kafka trap of Chikli’s own making.
No clean exit
There is no clean exit, only degrees of damage. British Jews will pay for it first, with strained community relations and new waves of suspicion. Israeli diplomats will pay for it next, forced to explain away another unnecessary scandal. The country as a whole will pay for it the longest, as the narrative cements in the international imagination.
Even if one assumes that Chikli acted out of some genuine desire to show solidarity with victims of Islamist extremism, the blunder reveals a breathtaking absence of strategic thought. A minister who can act with this level of political recklessness, without understanding the implications for global Jewish life or Israel’s international standing, is not qualified to be a minister at all.
Strategy requires foresight, proportionality, and restraint. Chikli has shown none of these. He has shown impulse, vanity, and a dangerous disregard for consequence.
Israel’s enemies do not need to invent its flaws. They simply wait for ministers like Chikli to display them in public. The tragedy is that this could have been avoided entirely with a single phone call, a moment of consultation, a pause for thought. Instead, the Diaspora Affairs minister has managed to harm both Israel’s reputation and the safety of the Diaspora he is meant to serve.
In a better time or place, a minister whose term has been one folly after another, culminating in this catastrophe, would do the honorable thing and resign. In a better place still, a minister who failed to do so would be dismissed. I hope, for the sake of Israel and the Diaspora, that we reach that better time soon.
The writer is a strategist, adviser, and producer whose work connects business, technology, and the battles of ideas. He is the CEO of Revenue Path, a consultancy that helps leaders design the strategies and processes that generate growth.