Netanyahu’s new best friend is Holocaust falsifier Viktor Orbán

Israel’s Prime Minister and leader of the Likud party invited Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to visit. Authoritarian Orbán is generally not a welcome guest in the EU or North America; President Obama and Trump have never invited him to the White House.

Mr. Orbán is creating a new history for Hungary, a heroic one. His regime has decided to downplay or outright erase some uncomfortable facts from the country’s WWII history. According to this new story the Hungarians were victims of the great world powers and shouldn’t be blamed for the tremendous loss of lives in the Hungarian Holocaust. The problem is that many of the crimes against Jews were committed by Hungarians, some of who were even convicted. It is quite shocking that 70 years after WWII, Mr. Orbán praises pro-Hitler leader Miklós Horthy.

It comes as no surprise that Israeli politicians have called to cancel Orbán’s invitation. Member of Knesset (Israel’s Parliament) and leader of the Yeish Adit party Mr. Yair Lapid, whose late father was Hungarian Holocaust survivor has said that “Viktor Orbán should not visit the country…. Orbán is the man who said that Miklós Horthy is a great leader. He murdered my grandparents in Hungary. And the very fact that Netanyahu is making us the best friends in the world of these regimes in Europe is worrisome.” In 2013 Mr. Lapid spoke in the Hungarian Parliament and told that during the Horthy regime there was a sign on the building: “No dogs and Jews allowed.” Ms. Tamar Zandberg, chair of the Meretz party, also wrote a letter to Netanyahu demanding that Orban’s visit to the Jewish state be nixed.

Yair Lapid in the Hungarian Parliament

It is worth mentioning that Mr. Lapid’s father Tommy, a well-known Israeli politician and journalist, was born in Novi Sad (Újvidék in Hungarian) as Tamás Lampel and survived WWII in Budapest with the help of Raoul Wallenberg.

On June 4, 2009 Mr. Orbán wrote a letter to warmly greet the inauguration of the statue of Albert Wass a convicted WWII criminal in the City of Pomáz. Mr. Wass received the death sentence in absentia for killing Jews in Romania. In June 2017 Mr. Orbán called Hungary’s wartime ruler Miklós Horthy an “exceptional statesman.” Horthy supported Mussolini and Hitler and declared war on the United States and responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of Hungarians Jews and non-Jews alike

One of Mr. Orbán’s closest ally is Mr. László Kövér the current Speaker of the Hungarian Parliament. Mr. Kövér organized the bizarre re-burial of József Nyirő, a WWII Hungarian Nazi politician who died in Spain. Romanian authorities showed some common sense and blocked the event. Mr. Kövér also inaugurated a plaque of convicted WWII criminal János Esterházy in the Hungarian Parliament Building. The Slovak Jewish community protested

Mr. Reuven Rivlin, Speaker of the Knesset at the time was so upset that he canceled Mr. Kövér’s invitation to Israel in 2012.

Mr. János Áder, Hungary’s President also inaugurated Wass and Esterházy statues and praised Hungarian fascists. Virtually all ruling Fidesz party politicians, Mr. János Lázár, Mr. Lajos Kósa, Ms. Mónika Dunai, Ms. Kinga Gál etc. praised fascists. The Haaretz headline told it all: “Israel Has a Tough Time Finding a Hungarian Leader Not Identified with anti-Semites.”

Today there are countless new statues, plaques that praise Hungarian fascists and falsify events of the Holocaust. The Orbán government has built a cottage industry to manufacture “evidences” and rewrite the life of war criminals.

You may ask: How was this possible? Well, the Orbán government even created a fake anti-Semitism “watch group” called TEV (Tett és Védelem) controlled by a tiny government-paid, Chabad-connected group. Hungary’s main Jewish organization (MAZSIHISZ) does not participate in the “work” of TEV. They publish statistics and find anti-Semites among Mr. Orbán’s political enemies. No ruling Fidesz party member or ally of Mr. Orbán have ever been accused of racism or antisemitism. TEV even blames the United States for spreading anti-Semitism since the server of a notorious fascist site (kuruc.info) was registered in the US. Kurucinfo’s content has been written and loaded in Hungary for more than a decade, yet TEV is unable to find the perpetrators. TEV is run by Fidesz Chabad operative Mr. Kálmán Szalai who recently converted to Judaism.

Mr. Kálmán Szalai of TEV finds anti-Semites among Orbán’s political opponents

Mr. Orbán and Mr. Netanyahu are friends and shared the same political and campaign advisor, the late Mr. Arthur J. Finkelstein. They both paid him handsomely. Orbán recently also hired two US-based Israeli lobbyists, Tzvika Brot and Ariel Sender. Brot is close to Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister even offered him the job of director of communications but Brot declined.

Orbán and Netanyahu in Budapest – good friends

Hungary needs to take a second look at its institutionalized racism and the country needs a “denazification” program. As a first step, I suggest the removal of the more than fifty recently installed Albert Wass statues. It is appalling that a convicted WWII war criminal whose writings are popular on American Nazi websites like Stormfront is highly revered by Hungary’s government officials.

György Lázár

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