Israel is on the “front line in the battle for Western civilisation”, Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs has said.

Speaking to the JC from Israel on Thursday, Minister Amichai Chikli said there may never have been a conflict with “more moral clarity” than the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Chikli said: “You have on the one hand a terror group who, on October 7, made children, women, and innocents their targets of choice and who filmed their barbarism on GoPros. Their own leaders admit they would rather build terror tunnels than shelters to protect Gazans. In fact, one of their leaders, Mousa Abu Marzouk, said the responsibility of protecting Palestinians fell to the United Nations.

“On the other hand, you have the IDF. I don’t know of any other Western army that goes to so much effort to prevent harming non-combatants, despite even some of those civilians participating in their thousands in the atrocities of October 7.

“It is therefore I think completely inhumane to support or excuse the actions of Hamas. This is a war Israel was forced into, and one that we must now win. I think that it is absolutely crucial not just for the state of Israel, but also for Western civilisation and European countries specifically that Hamas is totally defeated, morally, politically, territorially.”

The Likud party member and former Minister for Social Equality said it was one of his responsibilities as Minister of Diaspora Affairs to create “global strategies” to curb rising Jew-hatred.

As part of this effort, Chikli is planning a trip to Europe. He will visit charities and security organisations in several countries to “collect knowledge and understanding of antisemitism on the ground” on a country-by-country basis.

He said: “I think there is an opportunity now for the people and leaders of Britain, France, Germany and other countries to learn lessons from October 7.

"They must understand the threat that is facing them too from Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated fanatical ideologies, and must operate pre-emptively and decisively against all groups acting as apologists and advocates for terror.”

Capitulating to terror, Chikli said, will inevitably encourage its supporters and sponsors to carry out further attacks.

Quoting the words of the late Lord Rabbi Sacks, that what “begins with Jews never ends with Jews,” Chikli said: “Without total defeat, this atrocity on October 7 might inspire supporters of radicalism around the world to follow in the steps of Hamas and attack not just Jewish communities but Western communities generally, who they see as their enemy.

“Now more than ever we can see how evil chooses Jews as its worst enemy. The Jewish state is now on the front line against evil. But I am proud to be a Jew, and I am proud to be the enemy of evil. I am calling on the diaspora to likewise be proud; do not be shy and do not be afraid. We will prevail. Am Yisrael Chai.”