Israel is not exactly an Alpine country with hundreds of ski slopes or thousands of world class skiers. Hungary has had some good competitive skiers in the past but has never produced a world class skier. It seems that all this has changed now; Hungary has a new ski star – in Israeli colors. Here is the story. A couple […]
It’s May Day in Hungary — a national holiday where major political parties hold picnics and rallies, Budapest’s Városliget (City Park) fills with families, games for children, barbecues and vendors, and the almost moribund Munkáspárt, the hard-line successor of the country’s pre-1989 Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, shows signs of life by marching on Andrássy út and serving zsíróskenyér (bread with […]
For the first time in the Visegrád Group’s history, the leaders of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia will hold a summit outside of Europe, notably in Jerusalem. It is known that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán maintains a close working relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that Fidesz has borrowed some elements of its political strategy […]
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 […]
The Orbán government had high hopes that the election of Donald Trump as president would lead to improved bilateral relations between Hungary and the United States–relations that had very much deteriorated since 2010, after Fidesz took power. The Orbán government had been paying Washington lobbyist Connie Mack around $112,000 per month, primarily to secure a much coveted Oval Office visit […]
Hungarian authorities are being tight lipped about a terrifying accident that occurred at the Budapest Airport. On March 23, Dikla Abitbul, a 38-year-old mother of two from the Israeli city of Lod apparently fall out of a plane to the tarmac, sustaining head injuries; she is in critical condition. There have been no press conferences, no TV interviews with safety […]
Michael Regenstreif is the editor of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin. In the August 21, 2017 print and online version of the Canadian publication, he writes about attempts by political leaders to de-legitimize the media in both Israel, as well as in the United States. As readers of the Hungarian Free Press know, this important institution of democracy has been under […]
Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s Prime Minister, has told his diplomats to charm influential decision makers everywhere, and use every opportunity to convince the world that his image is distorted in the Western media. At home Mr. Orbán is winning far-right voters with revved up racist, anti-Muslin and anti-Semitic rhetoric. Overseas he is advertising a moderate image, as a politician who has […]
In a bizarre speech Hungary’s right-wing authoritarian strongman, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, recently called Miklós Horthy an “exceptional statesman.” Admiral Horthy, also an authoritarian (although some called him a dictator) led his country as Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary following the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I. He turned pro-Mussolini and pro-Hitler in the 1930s and […]
While racism and anti-Semitism are not uncommon in European Union (EU) countries, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is the only one who brought anti-Semitism into a ruling party. Ruling party Fidesz politicians in Hungary frequently make anti-Semitic remarks in Hungarian, never in English. And the doubletalk has served Orbán well. His party has attracted a fair share of the country’s […]
