Hungary is steadily isolating itself. The latest blow to the country came with Israel's decision to disinvite Laszlo Kover, the speaker of the Hungarian parliament, from a ceremony honoring Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who rescued tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis, that will take place in July. The move is more than justified. Hungary is witnessing an upsurge in nationalism and anti-Semitism that is cause for alarm. It is now chic to disparage and attack Jews.
Kover has been disinvited because he took part recently in a ceremony for the anti-Semitic writer Jozsef Niro, a member of the far right during World War II. The president of the Israeli parliament Reuven Rivlin said, "We in Israel were appalled by the shocking news that you chose to participate in the event honoring the memory" of Niro. Elie Wiesel has already returned an award from the Hungarian government in protest. Kover is unrepentant. He responded to Rivlin that Niro was "no fascist, no war criminal." This is semantics. As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports,the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC recently cited anti-Semitic excerpts from Niro's parliamentary speeches during World War II. Words are also weapons.
Nor is this all. The second largest party in Hungay, Jobbik, has ventilated anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Based on some incautious remarks by Israeli president Shimon Peres about Jewish real estate investors, members of the party such as its foreign affairs spokesman Marton Gyongyosi have been warning of the "colonization" of Hungary. Gyongyosi has also suggested that it is hardly surprising that such efforts would prompt "people to feel that Jews are not welcome here." The Jewish Chronicle initially reported that he expressed doubts about the number of Hungarian Jews that perished in the Holocaust.
Meanwhile, as the Economist has noted in "Does Hungary Have A New Hero?", the country is going gaga over its old fascist leader Miklos Horthy. Statues and plaques are being erected to the old boy. A thousand Hungarians, a number in paramilitary uniforms, showed up at the village of Csokako to dedicate a statue to him, the Economist writes. How long before the murderous Iron Cross, which replaced Horthy in the final stages of the war, is publicly lauded?
Fifty American lawmakers have sent a letter to Hungary expressing their dismay. Whether it is a result of nostalgia for the past, suppressed nationalism, a bad economy, or all three, Hungary's leader Viktor Orban has done nothing to quell the newly virulent anti-Semitism. The American Congress is right to warn Hungary that its disgusting behavior, its farrago of old hatreds and conspiracy theories about Jewish power, is not going unnoticed. What actions will the European Union, so quick to criticize Israel, take?
Comments
Jacob Heilbrun wrote:
This is a deeply tendentious article by Mr. Heilbrunn. In the first place note the blatant bias in failing to report what Mr. Peres actually said. What then did Peres actually say? Here it is:
And yet, per Heilbrunn, it's the Hungarians alone drawing the "we/you" distinction? Even though Heilbrunn himself sees this as only an "incautious" remark by Peres thereby—amazingly enough—accepting its validity? Maybe if Heilbrunn doesn't want to see "conspiracy theories about Jewish power" he ought to first sit down with no less than the President of the State of Israel and explain to him not to say they exist, much less bray about those he says essentially do, in the most insulting manner to others possible.And in the second place when the hell did it become the duty or even the job of the U.S. Congress to go running around the world being the policeman against alleged anti-semitism? To very possibly hurt it's own interests with other countries automatically taking the side of those who, as Heilbrunn does here, allege anti-semitism at the drop of a hat ... while reporting on only half of the true story or less? And in the third place regarding Hungary's "upsurge in nationalism" and alleged "disgusting" behavior meriting the U.S. Congress to intervene, if those are the standards it would near have to go to war against Israel. "Upsurge in nationalism" hardly even captures what's gone on in Israel, which openly disallows any immigrants not meeting a sole racial/ethnic standard, calls undocumented aliens not meeting that standard "infiltrators" and is building camps to house them in before it forcibly ejects same, and has been stealing the land of other non-jews for 40+ years now. Or, in Heilbrunn's world, is the U.S. Congress really just an arm of Israel now?