‘Protesting Israel’s aggressive policies’: Far-right party promotes anti-Semitic mood in Hungary
The wave of Anti-Semitism in Hungarian society is “especially
shocking” for local Jews, who remember the country’s “very tragic
history,” RT's Aleksey Yaroshevsky reports from Budapest.
“In the 1940s, Hungary’s Jewish community was one of the largest
in Europe, but the Nazi invasion changed all that, with more than
half-a-million people perishing in the Hungarian holocaust,”
he said.
The police are expecting more nationalist protests in Hungary’s
capital on Tuesday as the city hosts “The Jewish life and
anti-Semitism in contemporary Europe,” conference on October
1-2.
International lectures at the event will focus on the causes of
anti-Semitism and how to tackle it, as well as offering an
analysis of the political, cultural and religious situation of
European Jewry.
European officials have sounded the alarm over the increasing
number of anti-Semitic incidents across the bloc, pledging to
“vigorously oppose the forces of anti-Semitism.”
“The European Commission has noted, with great concern,
reports of a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the EU.
Anti-Semitism has no place in European society or indeed any
society. We are a Union that treasures diversity and protects the
rights of individuals to lead their lives as they wish," Jose
Manuel Barroso, European Commission President, said in his letter
to European Jewry, written in September.
The rise in anti-Semitism began in the county [Hungary] several
years ago. In August 2012, Hungarian fans booed the Israeli
national anthem and chanted the names of fascist leaders during a
friendly match between the two countries’ national football teams
in Budapest.
Another football game, several months later, saw an attack by
hooligans on Ferenc Orosz, the leader of Hungary’s anti-racist
Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.
“I heard a bunch of fans chanting Nazi slogan, Sieg Heil. I
asked them to stop, but they ignored me. Then after the game they
attacked me, one of them hit me in the face and broke my
nose,” Orosz said on local television.
The Hungarian Jewish community says that the incident was just
one link in a long chain of anti-Semitic and inter-ethnic
tensions in the country.
“We keep hearing anti-Semitic slogans and sentiments from
inside our parliament and in some of our press,” Andras
Heisler, president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in
Hungary told RT. “If you remember Nazi Germany, everything
also started with rhetoric, then came concentration camps and gas
chambers. And in Hungary sometimes this vocal racism sometimes
turns into real violence – like the six gypsies, who were killed
by a gang of nationalists a few years ago.”
In August, three members of the neo-Nazi gang, who killed six
Roma gypsies in a series of planned attacks in 2008 and 2009,
were jailed for life, with another perpetrator being handed a
13-year sentence.
In May, The World Jewish Congress even decided to hold its annual
event in Budapest to highlight what they believe is escalating
anti-Semitism in this Central European state.
“Jews are again wondering whether they will have to leave the
country,” Ronald Lauder, the Congress’s president, said at
the time.
Lauder also stressed that the statues of Hungary’s wartime leader
during the mass deportation of Jews, Miklos Horthy, erected by
several of the country’s small municipalities were sending
“the wrong signals.”
The far-right Jobbik party currently is the third-largest in the
country. It has previously staged several massive anti-Semitic
rallies in the streets of Hungarian cities.
The party’s leader leader, Gabor Vona, says the protests had
nothing to do with racism, but were aimed at drawing attention to
what he claimed to be the aggressive policy of Israel.
“Israeli president [Shimon] Peres once said that the only other
way to prevail without military action was by economic
means,” Vona explained. “And later he said Israel will
invest a lot of money in Hungary. We have been witnessing a huge
influx of capital from Israel to our country since then and have
tried to find out what was behind it, but the Jewish community
called us Nazis and refused to speak to us. That’s why we
protested.”
The radical party is planning another major rally for Hungary’s
National Day on October 23, inviting everyone, who feels
“cheated and humiliated” by the country’s governments of
the past 24 years, to take part.
Jobbik made headlines after getting into Hungary’s parliament in
2010, while the country's economy was ailing. And, judging by
opinion polls, they’re looking to strengthen their position after
next year’s vote.