Romania is accusing Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli of interfering in the country’s elections, after he held a publicized phone call last week with radical-right presidential candidate Calin Georgescu, who has a long record of glorifying the country’s Nazi collaborationist leaders.

Romania’s ambassador to Israel told Haaretz that Chikli’s conduct hurts his country’s close relationship with Israel, and emphasized that Romania never intervened in Israeli politics in a similar manner.

Chikli spoke last week with Georgescu, a far-right, pro-Russian politician who won 24 percent of the vote in last week’s first round of the Romanian presidential election. He is supposed to face off against liberal politician Elena Lasconi, but authorities in Romania are now investigating potential foreign intervention by Russia and other countries in the election, and therefore the first-round results may be annulled. Georgescu has expressed pro-Russian, anti-NATO positions, and is considered the preferred candidate of the Kremlin in Romania.

During his call with Chikli, the Romanian far-right leader promised to move the country’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and not to respect the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The phone call was publicized by far-right media outlets in Romania and other countries, and mainstream Israeli media sites. Georgescu found the call useful because he is under criticism for his long history of praise for antisemitic Romanian leaders and organizations who took part in the mass murder of the country’s Jews.

Georgescu has praised the antisemitic Iron Guard organization, which is famous for its involvement in sadistic acts of violence and persecution against Jews, including the 1941 Bucharest pogrom in which more than 100 Jews were murdered. He has also praised [Axis] dictator Ion Antonescu, who collaborated with Nazi Germany and was responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.

Georgescu described the Iron Guard and Antonescu as heroes and martyrs, and did so repeatedly, despite facing criticism from Jewish organizations for his words.

Romanian ambassador to Israel, Radu Ioanid, who is himself a world-renowned Holocaust historian, told Haaretz that he “learned with dismay and outrage that minister Amichai Chikli recently had a phone conversation with Calin Georgescu, a presidential candidate in Romania who openly and repeatedly praised the leader of the fascist and antisemitic Iron Guard as well as dictator Ion Antonescu, both involved in pogroms and mass murder of the Romanian Jews.”

Ioanid added that “for 31 years I was part of the senior management of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum based in Washington. I find it shocking to see a minister of the government of the State of Israel be perceived as backing, in a crucial electoral moment, a Romanian political candidate who is loudly and proudly glorifying historical figures who were directly responsible for mass murder of Jews.”

He called Chikli’s actions “a direct insult to the memory of the Romanian Holocaust victims, both dead and survivors,” and also “a direct hit on all good-faith efforts at Holocaust education in Europe and building policies to fight antisemitism based on historical reality, not on conveniently whitewashed versions which serve contemporary political objectives.”

The ambassador said that he recommends Chikli “read my works on the Holocaust in Romania and the Wiesel Report, the work of an international commission chaired by the late Elie Wiesel and endorsed by Yad Vashem.”

Apart from the historical aspects of Chikli’s support for Georgescu, Ambassador Ioanid said that the minister’s behavior was also damaging to the warm relationship between Romania and Israel: “Romania always showed respect and friendship to Israel and staunchly stood by Israel after the 7th of October Hamas attack. No Romanian official has ever taken the liberty to get involved in internal Israeli electoral matters. Acting this way, Minister Chikli endangers the solid friendship which exists between Romania and Israel.”

This isn’t the first time the Netanyahu government has intervened in Romanian politics. In August 2023, Israel’s Ambassador Reuven Azar met George Simion, leader of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians on the orders of then-Foreign Minister Eli Cohen.

Israel had previously boycotted the party, whose members frequently glorify Antonescu and the Iron Guard, over its antisemitic rhetoric and advocacy of Holocaust revisionism. Diplomatic sources in Bucharest at the time called it a “very unfortunate and very unhappy initiative.”

It is also not the first time that Chikli himself has intervened in the elections of another country by expressing support for a far-right candidate with a damning record on antisemitism and memory of the Holocaust. Ahead of the French parliamentary election earlier this year, Chikli endorsed the party of far-right leader Marine Le Pen. His intervention in the election led to a crisis in Israeli-French relations; eventually, Le Pen’s party finished third in the election, and Chikli’s involvement was denounced by the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

So far, there has been no response from the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem regarding Chikli’s involvement in Romania, but an Israeli diplomatic source told Haaretz that Foreign Minister Gideon Saar is aware of the unease in Bucharest over the subject. “Romania is a friendly country and it’s important that we put out an official statement against this kind of intervention in their politics,” the source added.

(Spotted here.)