Constantin von Hoffmeister examines how the Israeli prime minister singles out Alexander Dugin as a driving force behind growing anti-Israel sentiment among Western conservatives, prompting the Russian philosopher to respond with his views on Zionism, Traditionalism, and civilizational sovereignty.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has launched an extraordinary verbal attack on Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, accusing him of helping spread antisemitism throughout the West and exercising a particularly dangerous influence over young American conservatives. Speaking during a meeting with Russian-speaking Israeli activists, Netanyahu described Dugin as a “terrible man” whose ideas were poisoning the Western Right. His remarks exposed the growing antagonism between the Israeli leadership and political currents that reject the country’s foreign policy and its privileged relationship with the United States.
The confrontation comes amid deteriorating relations between Israel and Russia over the Middle East. On October 18, Netanyahu publicly criticized Moscow’s cooperation with Iran and accused Russian-linked networks of conducting antisemitic information campaigns against Israel. His subsequent attack on Dugin placed a recognizable intellectual figure at the center of these accusations, suggesting that opposition to Israeli policies within Western conservative movements has become a matter of serious concern for the Israeli government.
The exchange is particularly revealing because Dugin’s political philosophy has long attracted interest among sections of the international Right seeking alternatives to American liberal hegemony. His theories of multipolarity, Eurasianism, and the Fourth Political Theory have found audiences far beyond Russia. Netanyahu’s accusation therefore raises a larger question: whether the ideological struggle surrounding Israel has become inseparable from the wider confrontation between the American-centered international system and the emerging multipolar world.
The Exchange Between Netanyahu and Arina Aminov
The woman addressing Netanyahu in the recording is Arina Aminov, a Ukrainian-born Israeli activist and founder of the Hasbara Association, an organization dedicated to promoting Israel’s image and countering narratives considered hostile to the Israeli state.
According to a report published by the Israeli news portal NAnews on April 3, 2025, Aminov emigrated from Ukraine to Israel and subsequently became active in public communications. Following the events of October 7, 2023, she organized a network of Russian-speaking bloggers involved in countering anti-Israel messaging on social media. The initiative developed into the Hasbara Association, whose activities reportedly reached tens of millions of people monthly. In April 2025, Aminov received the Knesset Speaker’s Quality of Life Prize in recognition of her public communications work.
During her exchange with Netanyahu, Aminov complained that the Israeli government’s information campaigns had neglected Russian-speaking audiences. The prime minister responded by identifying Russian organizations and Dugin himself as major sources of the opposition Israel encounters in Western public opinion.
The following is the complete English rendering of the exchange in the circulated video:
Arina Aminov: Government institutions do not sufficiently recognize the Russian language. They recognize Spanish, they recognize French, all of them.
At the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, until now, Russian has been missing.
Information campaigns have been conducted in all languages. The fight against antisemitism has been conducted in all languages.
And this is illogical.
Benjamin Netanyahu: The main source of antisemitism in the West, unfortunately, is the activity of Russian organizations and that terrible man, Dugin.
A terrible man, simply terrible.
And he is particularly poisoning young American right-wingers.
That is where the main efforts are directed.
They are working together. They have alliances.
And I must tell you that you are right.
This battle must also be fought through artificial intelligence, as well as through government institutions.
And we have reason to do this. I think you can confirm that.
Dugin Responds to Netanyahu
Dugin responded on Telegram with a lengthy statement in Russian, rejecting responsibility for the worldwide growth of anti-Zionist sentiment while acknowledging that many of his supporters oppose Israel. He also expressed concern about the implications of being personally designated an enemy by the Israeli prime minister.
His response, translated in full into English, reads as follows:
Alexander Dugin:
All of this is somewhat strange. I condemn the genocide of the Palestinians, I support Russia’s position on Gaza, and I am a friend of Iran, but I certainly cannot take responsibility for the fact that right-wingers throughout the world consider Israel their number one enemy. Many do, yes. But without my involvement.
It is not that I entirely disagree with Netanyahu’s opinion. If I am designated the principal enemy, I may indeed become one. Although quite recently, Netanyahu himself acknowledged that I was the only person in Russia who regarded Judaism as a civilization.
This is a serious matter, especially considering what happens to Israel’s enemies. I am not inclined to take it too lightly.
I have been interested in Judaism for a very long time, and I know considerably more about this tradition than most people. And frankly, I try to understand what motivates them.
And yes, a great many conservatives (let us call them right-wingers) around the world follow my ideas on multipolarity, geopolitics, and the Fourth Political Theory with interest. But I am certainly not the instigator of anti-Zionist sentiment, although such sentiments exist among my supporters, and very many of them hold these views. There are also convinced Zionists among the traditionalists. Although the majority hold a different position.
I am a Russian Orthodox patriot, a supporter of Putin and of Russia as the Katechon, that is, the Third Rome.
And no one will dislodge me from this position. Netanyahu is a radical, extremist adherent of his own eschatology. I understand it, but I do not share it. I bear no responsibility for the worldwide right-wing anti-Zionist movement, although I share many of its ideas.
Ben-Gvir could even have come to visit us. My attitude towards Zionism is complex rather than simple. Among the Eurasianists was Yakov Bromberg, whose work I published. I appreciate certain ideas of Ze’ev Jabotinsky concerning the necessity of resisting Modernity and returning to Tradition. I am certainly not an antisemite in any sense (Arabs are Semites, and this fact alone renders the term meaningless).
In general, it is time for a serious discussion about where our religious and secular traditions are leading us. The Right (including the Jewish Right) speaks about this more coherently than the Left.
I am not the cause of “antisemitism in the West”; they came up with that themselves. Nor am I its consequence. I simply stand for the Russians, and for all other civilizations. I certainly do not deny Jews their right to be themselves, and I have never remotely called for their disappearance. But they cannot be allowed to destroy whomever they please. I am against that.
Every people that disappears impoverishes humanity. That is wrong. Jews must exist. So must Palestinians, Iranians, Whites, and Blacks.
A Conflict Over Civilizational Sovereignty
Dugin’s response places the controversy within the intellectual framework that has defined much of his work. For him, Russia represents a distinct civilization whose spiritual identity and geopolitical destiny cannot be subordinated to the priorities of Washington or its allies. The concept of the Katechon, derived from Christian eschatology, occupies a central place in this understanding. Dugin interprets Russia as a restraining force against the destructive tendencies of modernity, a historical power whose mission is inseparable from the Orthodox conception of the Third Rome.
His comments on Judaism are especially significant. Rather than portraying Jewish civilization as something inherently hostile to Russia, Dugin insists upon its distinct historical and religious existence. His references to Eurasianist thinker Yakov Bromberg and Revisionist Zionist founder Ze’ev Jabotinsky indicate a willingness to examine Jewish nationalism through the wider prism of Tradition, collective identity, and civilizational particularity. This makes his relationship with Zionism more complicated than the categorical hostility suggested by Netanyahu’s remarks.
Why Netanyahu Is Concerned About the Western Right
Perhaps the most revealing element of Netanyahu’s remarks is his focus on young American conservatives. Israel has historically benefited from strong support among the American Right, particularly among evangelical Christians, neoconservatives, and Republican foreign-policy institutions. Yet that consensus has increasingly encountered opposition from conservative figures who question Washington’s Middle Eastern commitments and argue that American foreign policy should be guided by national interests rather than the priorities of foreign allies.
Dugin’s intellectual influence is relevant to this broader debate. The philosophical appeal of multipolarity rests upon the idea that civilizations should determine their own political destinies without submitting to a universal ideological model. Applied to American politics, this principle can reinforce criticism of foreign entanglements and encourage skepticism towards the assumption that American and Israeli interests necessarily coincide.
There is an additional irony in the confrontation. Netanyahu himself leads a nationalist political movement that emphasizes Jewish historical continuity, national sovereignty, religious inheritance, and the defense of a distinct collective identity. These are themes that, in a different civilizational context, overlap with elements of Dugin’s traditionalist philosophy. Their disagreement therefore emerges not simply from a division between nationalism and liberalism, but from competing understandings of sovereignty, historical destiny, and the legitimate limits of political power.
The Larger Struggle
The confrontation between Netanyahu and Dugin reflects a profound disagreement over the political future of the Middle East and the wider international system. Netanyahu sees Russian political influence, cooperation with Iran, and hostility towards Israel within Western conservative circles as interconnected challenges. Dugin interprets the same developments through the emergence of a multipolar world in which Russia, Iran, and other civilizations assert their independence from Western domination.
What makes the dispute remarkable is that it has become personal. By singling out Dugin, Netanyahu has elevated a Russian political philosopher from the realm of intellectual discourse to that of an explicitly named ideological adversary.
Ultimately, Netanyahu’s denunciation may say as much about the changing political climate in the West as it does about Dugin himself. The Israeli prime minister has identified a philosophical current that challenges the assumptions underlying the traditional American-Israeli alliance. What is unmistakable is that the struggle over Israel’s position in the emerging world order has reached the point where ideas, intellectual loyalties, and competing visions of civilization have become matters of direct confrontation between political leaders and philosophers.
