Greece was once one of Israel's most hostile opponents in the Western world, and it was the last country in the Western ...

Greece was once one of Israel's most hostile opponents in the Western world, and it was the last country in the Western bloc to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel, doing so only in 1990. For decades, Athens backed Arab states and the PLO, and in 1982 the government of Andreas Papandreou hosted Yasser Arafat in Athens as he fled Beirut for Tunis. A 2019 ADL survey found that 67% of Greeks held antisemitic attitudes, nearly three times the European average of 24%. That picture has changed sharply. The turning point came in 2010, when the Mavi Marmara crisis pushed Israel away from Turkey and toward Greece. A trilateral Israel-Greece-Cyprus security framework was established in 2016, and as Turkey became a shared strategic concern for all three countries, the alliance deepened and public attitudes followed. By 2025, a follow-up ADL survey found antisemitic attitudes in Greece had dropped by nearly 20%. Among the Greek right, hostility toward Israel fell by 33.5% between 2019 and 2022. A Pew Research Center survey conducted earlier this year found the Greek right to be the most supportive of Israel of any political group across all 36 countries surveyed, with 45% expressing a favorable view. A July poll found 42.2% of Greeks now consider Israel an ally, second only to France. A separate May survey found 55.7% support maintaining the alliance, including roughly one-third of far-left voters. Greek Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis, who rose through a party with an antisemitic past, said last week that public opinion had shifted "dramatically in a pro-Israel direction." The shift extends to Cyprus, where lawmakers from three parties controlling 33 of the parliament's 56 seats recently set up a chapter of the Transatlantic Friends of Israel organization. Not everyone is on board. Greek communists are calling for relations to be cut entirely, and former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has warned of a takeover of parliament by what he calls the "Israeli lobby." The analysis comes from Dr. Neil Bar of the University of Haifa's School of Political Science, published this week in Ynet. #Greece #Israel #Geopolitics