Anyone who watched the recent video of a Greek minister delivering a fluent and impassioned monologue explaining why “only a fool would not admire the Jewish people” could have assumed he was another European politician who discovered Israel after October 7.
But in the case of Adonis Georgiadis, Greece’s health minister, the story is far more complicated. The man who has become one of Europe’s fiercest pro-Israel voices is also someone who once promoted an antisemitic book, then publicly apologized to the Jewish community.
On May 19, 2026, a day after Israel celebrated its second-place finish in the Eurovision final, Georgiadis attended the Israeli Embassy’s reception marking 78 years since the establishment of the state. He later wrote on X: “Israel is a true miracle of humanity, a country with a mature democracy, amazing economic, technological and scientific achievements.”
A few days earlier, he celebrated Israel’s Eurovision showing on X and accused the Greek left of hypocrisy: “In every other case they demand a boycott, but they continue to watch the competition.”
Georgiadis, 53, vice president of the ruling New Democracy party and Greece’s health minister since January 2024, is not a politician who leaves diplomacy to others.
From bookseller to health minister
To understand who he is, it is worth going back to age 15, when he worked in his father’s bookshop in Athens. According to his official biography on the Greek Health Ministry website, Georgiadis, a graduate of the history and archaeology department at the University of Athens, founded the family publishing house “Library of the Greeks” in 1993, mainly publishing translations of ancient Greek and Byzantine texts.
Before entering politics, he became a familiar face on Greek television as the host of literary programs in which he presented and sold books to viewers. The style made him a widely recognized figure in Greece.
In 2003, he joined the nationalist Popular Orthodox Rally party, known as LAOS, served as its spokesman and was elected to parliament in 2007 and 2009.
The turning point came in 2012. When LAOS refused to support Greece’s economic austerity plan, Georgiadis voted in favor of it against his party’s line, was expelled and moved to New Democracy. A year later, in 2013, he was appointed health minister for the first time, at the height of Greece’s economic crisis.
According to Greek Reporter, he merged clinics, changed drug pricing, imposed controversial hospital admission fees and planned paid afternoon surgeries. Researcher Antonis Klapsis told the site at the time: “What Georgiadis is trying to do is put an end to chaos.” Doctors did not agree even then, and protests against him erupted at several clinics.
A dark past and a historic apology
The appointment did not pass quietly. The Anti-Defamation League called on the government to reconsider it. On his television program, Georgiadis had promoted a book by Kostas Plevris, a lawyer who explicitly described himself as a “Nazi, fascist, racist and antisemite,” titled “The Jews: The Whole Truth.” International Jewish reports also attributed to Georgiadis remarks about “Jewish-owned” banks and the power of the “Jewish lobby” in relation to Greece’s debt.
On September 2025, in an interview with the Greek website tomanifesto, he declared that Jerusalem is a “Jewish city,” called Israel “Greece’s main strategic partner” against Turkey and said: “If we stand by Israel today, it will stand by us tomorrow, in whatever we need.”
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2017, Georgiadis issued an unusually direct public apology in Greek politics. According to the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, which published the statement, he wrote: “In the past, I lived alongside and tolerated the views of people who showed disrespect to my Jewish fellow citizens, and therefore I feel the need to apologize to the Jewish community. I am even more sorry that I supported and promoted the book of Kostas Plevris. The Holocaust of the Jewish people is the greatest shame of our modern civilization.”
ERT, Greece’s public broadcaster, reported that Saby Mionis, president of the Greek-Israeli Chamber of Commerce, welcomed the apology: “This is a first-of-its-kind statement by a Greek politician. I hope it marks a change in Greek political culture, where until now a clear ‘sorry’ was an unfamiliar word.”
‘They are simply antisemites’
Since the apology, and especially in recent years, Georgiadis has become one of the most prominent pro-Israel voices in Greece.
In summer 2025, when protesters prevented an Israeli ship from docking on the island of Syros, he wrote on X: “We owe an apology to those friends of Greece who chose to spend their vacation here and were forcibly prevented from doing so. Our country remains hospitable to all, and antisemitism has no place here.”
When protests continued at other ports, he added, according to Courthouse News: “They have no humanity. They simply hate the West and are antisemites. If they cared about innocent victims, they would talk about the Druze, the Hamas hostages, the massacre of Christians in Sudan.”
In September 2025, in an interview with the Greek website tomanifesto, Georgiadis declared that Jerusalem is a “Jewish city,” called Israel “Greece’s main strategic partner” against Turkey and said: “If we stand by Israel today, it will stand by us tomorrow, in whatever we need.”
In March 2026, he praised Israeli democracy on X, according to Liberal: “Israel enjoys one of the most vibrant and active democracies in the world. Political disagreements disappear when it comes to the good of the country.”
An active minister, a sick system
Last December, Georgiadis promoted trilateral medical cooperation in Washington between Greece, Israel and the United States, taking part in a roundtable discussion on Capitol Hill with members of the Congressional Hellenic-Israel Alliance on clinical trials and artificial intelligence in medicine.
The visit took place against the backdrop of the 10th trilateral summit in Jerusalem, where the prime ministers of Israel and Greece, along with the president of Cyprus, reaffirmed the strategic alliance in energy, security and research.
In his current term, Georgiadis is leading reforms he knows well, a second and upgraded version of what he tried during his first term: afternoon surgeries that shortened waiting lists for thousands of patients, the creation of a unified medical record for every citizen and a national cancer treatment center.
In January 2026, he announced 5,000 permanent hires for the public health system. An Interview poll published last December, measuring “active ministers” in the eyes of the public, ranked him third among all government ministers with 13.2%, behind only the finance and defense ministers.
But behind the successes lies a more complicated reality. An article published in September 2025 in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet ranked Greece 30th out of 38 OECD countries in patient safety. Other European health data placed Greece near the bottom of the European Union for unmet medical needs.
In October 2025, when Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Georgiadis visited Attikon Hospital for the opening ceremony of an oncology ward, protesting doctors greeted them. Police in riot gear fired pepper spray. The head of the Athens hospital doctors’ association told AP: “They think we will thank them because our salaries are frozen. Recently, 130 patients were sleeping on stretchers in corridors.”
In July 2024, Georgiadis tried to require private doctors to work emergency shifts in public hospitals, triggering an unofficial strike. Senior government officials were “deeply disturbed by the scale of the conflict.”
Not long ago, after a video showed an anesthesiologist at an oncology hospital allegedly asking a cancer patient for an under-the-table payment, Georgiadis immediately ordered him removed from the system and issued a personal apology to the patient. His video condemnation exploded across Greece.
In May 2026, his Innovation Fund law, intended to expand access to new medicines, drew opposition accusations that it had been created under pressure from American pharmaceutical companies. Georgiadis rejected the claim forcefully.
Why Georgiadis, and why now
Greek support for Israel is not accidental. The two countries share a strategic alliance based on energy, security and one mutual rival: Turkey.
Georgiadis is the loudest voice for that alliance inside the government. In a country where two-thirds of the public prefer neutrality in the conflict, he is not afraid to take a side, even when every post costs him politically at home. He simply writes what he thinks and pays the political price.