A Canadian minister won unexpected plaudits in Israel this week as he denounced a “new antisemitism” as a profound threat to Israel and the West.

Jason Kenney, Canada’s minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism, took a leading role in February’s London conference on antisemitism.

This week he spent four days in Israel and concluded: “The existential threat faced by Israel on a daily basis is ultimately a threat to the broader Western civilisation.

“It’s a threat that comes from profoundly undemocratic forces that don’t have the same conception of human dignity or freedom, and which abuse Israel as a kind of representative of the broader West and Western liberal-democratic values”.

He added: “I also very acutely understand the nature of the new antisemitism, and I think it’s even more dangerous than the old European antisemitism.”

Mr Kenney, 40, declared: “So much of the criticism Israel faces is motivated by a dangerous form of antisemitism that tries to hide behind anti-Zionism, and is represented by a coalition of the far left in the West with extreme currents of jihadi Islam that seek the destruction of the Jewish nation.

“They seem to believe that the Jewish people are the only people in the world that don’t have a right to a homeland.”