Meeting of minds as Bibi visits Orban
Bibi’s visit to Hungary is first by an Israeli premier
Budapest, July 17: Hungary welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday on a landmark visit that Prime Minister Viktor Orban hopes will bolster him in his battle with George Soros and deflect charges of stoking antiSemitism.
It brings together two right-wingers enamoured of US President Donald Trump and with a disdain for the left-leaning liberal global order bankrolled, as they see it, by the likes of Soros, the US financier and philanthropist.
Netanyahu, fresh from a contentious visit to France, will on Wednesday meet premiers of the Visegrad Group — Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic plus Hungary — that has been increasingly at odds with the rest of the EU.
“All these states are very pro-Israel,” Raphael Vago, an expert on Eastern Europe at Tel Aviv University, said. “They vote in our favour at the European Union and the United Nations.”
Netanyahu’s trip to Hungary, the first by an Israeli Premier since the end of Communism in 1989, comes with tempers flaring over Orban’s campaign vilifying the Hungarian-born billionaire Soros.
Posters attacking him for his alleged support of mass immigration — some daubed with “Stinking Jew” graffiti — have further upset Hungary’s over 100,000strong Jewish community, one of Europe’s largest.
They have often accused Orban, in power since 2010, of turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism or even encouraging it with nationalist rhetoric that analysts say is aimed at staving off a rise in for the far-right, a charge the 54year-old denies.
Recently Orban also praised Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s wartime leader and Hitler ally until 1944, as an “exceptional statesman” for rebuilding Hungary after World War I.