Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán

T

he Israeli left and its amen chorus in the media went apoplectic when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs first announced that Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán would make an official state visit to Israel, now scheduled for next week.

Orbán stands for everything that the left holds sit-ins for. He rules by executive fiat, not by consensus, having manipulated Hungary’s electoral system to amass a rubber-stamp, two-thirds majority in parliament. For that show of political acumen, he is reviled as a neofascist dictator, even as France’s far more liberal Emmanuel Macron wins accolades for pulling off a similar political feat.

Orbán fearlessly challenges Europe’s political elites. He clashed publicly in a news conference last week with Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, who defended her liberal policies on migrants as “humanitarian.” Orbán replied there is nothing humanitarian “in bringing in people who bring trouble.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu could never get away with such public rhetoric, but when he met Orbán last year in Budapest, the two found common ground in their contempt for Western European hypocrisy. Bibi was caught on an open mic telling Orbán it’s “absolutely crazy” that the European Union conditions trade with Israel on political issues, contrasting that with Israel’s trade relations with China and India, countries that trade freely with Israel.

When they meet again in Jerusalem, Netanyahu should ask Orbán how he’s progressing in his avowed fight against anti- Semitism. Some campaign posters Orbán’s party hung during this year’s parliamentary elections portrayed Hungarian-Jewish financier George Soros in anti-Semitic fashion. Netanyahu and Orbán may both abhor Soros’s extreme-left politics, but the anti-Semitic imagery conjured up the worst memories of Hungary’s often bloodstained relations with its Jews.

Aside from that, Netanyahu will ignore the left’s rage, and the demonstrations likely to mark Orbán’s visit. He will press on cultivating relations with Eastern European countries like Hungary as a counterweight to a Western Europe wallowing in a mess of its own making. (Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 718)