ISRAEL’S Minister for the Diaspora Naftali Bennett flew to Pittsburgh this week to stand alongside US Jews after the far-right terrorist slaughter at the Tree of Life synagogue but disgraced himself by linking it to Palestinians.

Bennett, who heads the extremist Habayit Hayehudi party, told a 4,000-strong memorial vigil sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh: “From Sderot to Pittsburgh, the hand that fires missiles is the same hand that shoots worshippers.

“We will fight against the hatred of Jews and anti-semitism wherever it raises its head. And we will prevail.”

His effort to place Palestinians struggling for their national rights on a par with far-right murderer Robert Bowers who shouted: “All Jews must die” as he murdered 11 Jewish mainly elderly worshippers is shameful.

But it is par for the course for an Israeli government that demeans all critics of its aggressive colonisation and wanton killing-field policies in the West Bank and Gaza as anti-semitic while cosying up to a US president who appeases neonazi groups in his own country.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government shares with Donald Trump’s administration an obsession about refugees fleeing violence and poverty — “infiltrators,” according to Netayahu and “invaders,” in Trump’s fevered imagination.

Bennett has been a driving force in government policy, writing on his Facebook page in 2012: “There is a plague of illegal infiltrators in the state of Israel. More than 163,000 illegals have already entered. Every day thousands more are arriving.”

He identified the New Israel Fund (NIF) as culpable in this regard, accusing it of organising to weaken government resolve to hold back the “infiltrators,” who, Bennett asserted, were responsible for 40 per cent of crime in Tel Aviv.

This overseas-funded NGO invests in Israel but its programme “is designed to advance pro-democracy values and their expression in Israel’s public life, safeguard human and civil rights — particularly in the occupied territories — and strengthen public trust in and support for democratic rights and values,” which, for Israel’s government, marks it out as an interfering do-gooder.

Bennett’s sentiments were barely distinguishable from those of Trump who has accused those seeking refuge at the US southern border of being “hardened criminals,” including “unknown Middle Easterners,” “bad people” and “tough, tough people.”

Trump made building a border wall with Mexico a major plank of his presidential election campaign two years ago to keep out refugees, claiming: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

He has gone one better for the midterm elections, accusing his political opponents of supporting the migrant caravan financially and ordering 5,200 troops to the border to back up 2,000 National Guards already there, warning marchers: “This is an invasion of our country and our military is waiting for you.”

There is little to distinguish between Trump’s scapegoating of refugees and that of the terrorist Bowers who targeted the Tree of Life synagogue because of its links with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) which helps refugees from violence and poverty gain asylum in the US.

“HIAS likes to bring in invaders that kill our people,” he declared on social media to justify his slaughter.

Prominent Israeli hate rapper and member of Netanyahu’s Likud party Yoav Eliasi, aka The Shadow, wrote on Facebook that Bowers “was a man fed up with subversive progressive Jewish leftists injecting their sick agendas” into the US.

He added that “HIAS brings in infiltrators that destroy every country. The murderer was fed up with people like you. Jews like you brought the Holocaust and now you’re causing anti-semitism. Stop bringing in hate money from Soros.”

Neither Netanyahu, Bennett nor Israel’s ambassador Ron Dermer has commented on Eliasi’s ravings yet, but the latter repeated the slander that supporters of the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) campaign to persuade Israel to end its illegal colonisation of the West Bank are as guilty of anti-semitism as the far-right.

He told MSNBC: “One of the big forces in college campuses today is anti-semitism and those anti-semites are usually not neonazis, on college campuses. They’re coming from the radical left. We have to stand against anti-semitism whether it comes from the right or whether it comes from the left.”

Those in power in Israel know where high-level anti-semitism emanates from in the US, but they appreciate the material and political backing for their expansionism given by Trump and many of his racist, xenophobic and anti-semitic supporters, especially in the Christian Zionist movement, so they target scapegoats to their left.

Tel Aviv refuses to tell the truth and is example is shamed by the honest and direct approach of Stephen Cohen, co-president of New Light congregation which uses the Tree of Life synagogue.

“When you spew hate speech, people act on it. It’s very simple and this is the result, a lot of people senselessly dead,” he said.

Rabbi Lev Fornari of the Kol Tzedek synagogue in West Philadelphia, who has also worked with HIAS, told the Democracy Now presenter Amy Goodman: “The murder of these 11 Jews in Pittsburgh is inextricably linked to the murder of the two black shoppers in Kentucky, to the slaughter of black worshippers in Charleston in 2015, to the burning of mosques and masjids around the country, to the attack on the Sikh temple in Wisconsin.

“There is a long history of political violence and we are seeing a surge in it.”

He blamed Trump, his supporters and enablers, declaring: “We need to … be seeing the interconnection of Trump’s language targeting all of us, targeting immigrants and Muslims and people of colour, black and brown bodies, queer and trans bodies, and seeing ourselves as all targets of white nationalism and to understand that anti-semitism and racism are at the core of white nationalism.

“And this administration is targeting all of us and we will not be divided, which is why I’m so inspired by the leaders of Pittsburgh, who are saying: ‘Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you denounce white nationalism,’ because that is what is responsible for all of this.”

Fornari disclosed that his synagogue has been taking part in solidarity rallies at the local Masjid Al-Jamia for about six months after a violent provocation by a white nationalist gang, carrying banners stating: “West Philly Jews support our Muslim neighbours” and “Love your neighbour as yourself.”

Similar sentiments were expressed after the atrocity in Pittsburgh, after Muslims raised $125,000 (£97,000) through an online crowdfunding campaign to assist Jewish families with medical bills, funeral expenses and other immediate and short-term needs.

CelebrateMercy director Tarek El-Messidi said the aim of the fundraiser, which had an initial target of $25,000 (£19,000) was “to respond to evil with good.

“We’re really hoping to help the community that’s suffering. We’re hoping to inspire more interfaith collaboration and peace.”

Pittsburgh Islamic Centre executive director Wasi Mohamed said: “We just want to know what you need. If it’s people outside your next service protecting you, let us know. We’ll be there.”

Burgeoning solidarity of those in the crosshairs of the US far-right is essential to counter the Trump agenda and its implications for the Middle East where Netanyahu believes White House backing makes him fire-proof.

Haaretz columnist Chemi Shalev noted this week that Israeli government efforts to present Trump as a great friend hit a serious obstacle in the solid evidence of anti-semitic comments by the US president.

“Trump’s anti-semitic assertion in December 2015 that Jews only support candidates that they can buy with money, his loud anti-semitic dog whistle in a political ad on the final day of the presidential campaign, his Charlottesville statements and his dogged refusal to clearly condemn white supremacist groups and other troubling incidents are all swept under the carpet by Israel’s official representatives,” he wrote.

Shalev recognised that a minority of US Jews agrees with the Israeli government stance, but “between a controversial US president who serves Netanyahu’s purposes and a grieving Jewish diaspora in need of reassurance and consolation, Netanyahu and his agents left no doubt which side they’re on.”

While Netanyahu and company back Trump fully, US Jews do not — 77 per cent rejected him in 2016, recognising what he stands for.

Anti-semitism, Islamophobia, white supremacy and assorted other hatreds are not, however, the sole preserve of Trump, as capitalism in crisis generates similar tendencies across the European Union, including Britain.

While expressing condolences and solidarity to Pittsburgh’s Jewish community, Britain’s Jewish Socialists’ Group issued a call for unity to oppose racists and fascists here who are determined to take over our streets and make minority communities fear for their lives.

“All the minority communities being targeted urgently need to work with each other and in mutual solidarity to get these people off our streets, out of our media, out of the institutions that run our society and out of government,” the JSG declared.

Anti-semitism is a scourge that has to be eradicated. It cannot be allowed to become a tool used by corrupt politicians in Israel or elsewhere to smear its opponents unjustly while giving a free pass to real anti-semites on opportunist grounds.