By Karl Pfeifer
Is the World Jewish Congress as wussy (“gittegylet”) as the liberal Budapest weekly Magyar Narancs claims? An association of wusses could never gather 500 delegates in Budapest.
Is the WJC the entity which controls the governments of Israel or the USA as Hungarian conspiracy theorists claim? You need to have lost any sense of reality to believe that.
As there was a discussion inside the WJC on whether it was right to hold a meeting in Budapest, I can state that the conference was a clear and definite success. Rampant anti-Semitism and racism in Hungary have become the centre of attention of international media. All the delegates and journalists received a 20-page brochure “Anti-Semitic Incidents in Hungary 2012,” documenting the present situation.
When Prime Minister Viktor Orbán spoke to the meeting about the Hungarians and the “Jewish people” in Hungary, that might have sounded good to a rightwing Israeli delegate who told to me accusingly, “Your definition of a nation is definitively European.”
Orbán has defined the Hungarian nation as an ethnically pure group held together by kinship and blood rather than by language and culture: “We are born into the myth of the Turul-bird just as we are born into our language and our history.”
A crazy notion considering that there are no ethnically pure Hungarians. But it helps to define those who do not believe in the pagan founding myth as “Jews”.
A few days before the congress took place, the German journalist Keno Verseck interviewed János Lázár, the powerful head of Orbán’s office.
Lázár complained bitterly […] about the international criticism of Hungary, above all that ‘part of the world labels all of us as anti-Semites.’ It is ‘unethical,’ the 38-year-old said, when ‘injuries in politics and business life are retaliated against with accusations of supposed anti-Semitism.’
Of course Lázár did not and could not name any serious politician or journalist who has ever claimed all Hungarians were anti-Semites. Lázár’s statement was a demagogic variant of the paranoid theory that Hungarians are eternal victims of unjust prejudice. And the second part of his statement about the “accusations of supposed anti-Semitism” is the typical defensive counter-attack which claims that anybody raising the issue of anti-Semitism is doing so in bad faith.
To quote from the brochure handed out at the meeting:
The growing number of violent physical incidents clearly shows the impact on “street anti-Semitism” made by the anti-Semitic utterances of Jobbik in the Hungarian Parliament or by the relevant crimes committed during World War II. In 2012, the media reported several cases where individuals suffered slight injuries because of their real or supposed Jewish identity. Furthermore, the proliferation of hate groups, speeches inciting violence and assault at neo-Nazi mass demonstrations and the military training of radical paramilitary skinhead groups are raising serious concerns. Finally, Jobbik is steadily becoming one of the most popular political parties amongst young people and the camp of its sympathizers aged between 18 and 37 is rapidly expanding. This constitutes a huge threat to democracy and social tolerance in the long run. Young people, who often lack a secure future perspective, are increasingly influenced and radicalized by popular neo-Nazi websites, such as kuruc.info, which publish illegal contents and the authorities have not yet managed to close down.
In 2012, the Hungarian Jewish community were not subject to complete marginalization. Some members of the Jewish community have started to flee their community and country, mostly to the neighboring country, Austria. Although the government has reiterated a clear statement that Hungary provides a homeland and safety for the Jews, just like for any other minority, Hungarian Jewry witness a rise in anti-Semitic incidents, including media-reported incidents, graffiti and disgraced cemeteries, hate speech in both political and social forums, verbal abuse shared on social networks or personal stories that might never become public.
Anti-Semitism is not a problem of the Jewry but of the Hungarian society and government. In Hungary, there is evidence to prove that more and more people outwardly express their dismay towards Jews than those who are indifferent towards them or who are perhaps Philosemites. It is precisely for these reasons that this report has been prepared in order to shed light on the extent of anti-semitism in Hungary.
When WJC president Ronald Lauder apologized to Orbán after the conference for having not mentioned an interview given by the prime minister to Eldad Beck for the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot, in which he promised not to form a coalition with Jobbik or to depend on its tacit support, the rightwing media celebrated victory.
Yet the truth of Orbán’s statements can only be measured if he will never depend on Jobbik’s support to stay in power– be it after the elections of 2014 or later. I personally consider them part of his usual “pávatánc,” the deft if tortuous maneuvers by which he has managed, so far with considerable success, to be both applauded for his non-anti-Semitism from abroad while gathering support from the all-too-real anti-Semites at home.
