Hungarian Conservative

‘His holocaust-survivor grandfather highlighted that he should kiss his weapon as now, unlike during the Holocaust, the Jewish people have the privilege from God to defend themselves. This is why, as Dr Ansbacher explained, when Hamas invaded Israel, they didn’t find helpless Jewish people, but thousands of strong soldiers, police officers, Special Forces, and also regular people who were able to defend themselves.’

As Itamar Eichner phrased in his Ynet News article, ‘Without the opposition from Israel’s friends in the EU, such as Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Germany, the EU might have already passed sanctions against Israel. Foreign policy decisions in the EU require consensus, which Israel’s allies prevent.’

‘It’s really important to understand that we’re not operating military to military with ground rules and understanding of military bases in uniform as these terrorists are not wearing uniforms and are embedding themselves in schools, hospitals, public areas, kindergartens, homes, hiding weapons in those areas, making themselves and the people around them targets. So it’s a very, very complex situation to fight in. Secondly, I think that Israel understands not only the humane side but also that it’s important to allow more and more humanitarian aid to enter because our goal is to eliminate Hamas and not to harm the people of Gaza,’ IDF Staff Sergeant Nicki told Hungarian Conservative in a recent interview.

On 21 May, pro-Palestinian individuals aggressively disrupted an even at the Danube Institute. However, they failed to silence the Israeli representatives who came to Hungary to bear witness to the brutality of Hamas on 7 October. What they managed to do, however, was to illustrate a crucial difference between the two sides: while Israeli advocates presented their arguments intelligently and peacefully, related their painful experiences, and even when they were shouted at answered questions, the Palestinian protesters had no substantive arguments; instead, they shouted antisemitic slogans full of hatred, and in a deeply disrespectful manner, tried to do everything to silence the Israelis and those who support them.

Lieutenant Colonel Shoshani pointed out that ‘in this horrible reality, even though we showed evidence of the barbaric sexual violence by Hamas on 7 October, the world still doesn’t believe it happened,’ which demonstrates how people tend to believe only what they want to, even when presented with facts.

Marking 80 years since over 550,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, the 20th March of the Living was held in Budapest on 5 May. This year’s march also honoured those murdered during the 7 October Hamas massacre.

‘Colonel Buskila explained that ‘‘there were two waves of the attack: in the first, there were the 2500 terrorists who infiltrated Israel and then in the second wave hundreds, maybe one thousand Gazan civilians took advantage of the fact that their border was open and rushed into Israel with knives just to kill people and steal.’’ Colonel Buskila added that these Gazans didn’t spare anything, and after they killed Israeli civilians in the kibbutzim, they stole everything, even the batteries, from those Israeli civilians’ cars whom they murdered.’

In a February episode of the Reflections from Budapest podcast the Director-General of the Tikvah Fund highlighted the neo-Marxist narrative in the West which holds that ‘weak is just’, and since the Palestinians are presented as weak, Israel is portrayed as their oppressor.

General Amir Avivi, the founder of the Israel Defence and Security Forum, also highlighted in his briefing following the IRI attack that the fact that Israel and its allies intercepted 99 per cent of the rockets ‘showed that Israel could cope with a direct attack from Iran, and can coordinate efficiently with its allies to defend itself.’

According to General Avivi, Hamas’s brutal attack on 7 October in Israel was possible because of two terrible decisions: the Oslo Accords and the 2005 disengagement of Israeli troops from Gaza. The Oslo Accords implemented in 1994 resulted in the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the major cities of Gaza and the transfer of weapons and control to the Palestinian Authority. This decision resulted in Gaza, previously not considered a significant military issue, becoming a top security problem for Israel.

State Secretary for International Communication and Relations Zoltán Kovács also met with the Israeli Hungarian hostages’ relatives and wrote in his Facebook post: ‘No “context” needed—just release the hostages!’. The State Secretary’s post reacted to the outrageous responses of the presidents of America’s most prestigious universities, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT, to the question posed by Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik whether calling for the genocide of Jews went against the universities’ code of conduct. All three presidents answered that it depended ‘on the context’.

‘Europe should have woken up already when millions of people swarmed through its borders, and absolutely nothing was done, with the responsible agencies simply welcoming migrants and not enforcing border control,’ Israeli security expert Or Yissachar told Hungarian Conservative.

‘In Gaza, Judea, and Samaria, we will have to do de-Nazification programmes just like Germany after WW II, to de-Nazify the society from all of these antisemitic textbooks and praising of terrorists…All of this will have to change.’

The conference, held on 27 November 2023, brought together a diverse groups of speakers to discuss the repercussions of the Israel-Hamas war and the situation of the Christian community in Israel.

Mosab Hassan Yousef, known as the son of Hamas’s co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, held a historic speech at the United Nations this week in which he stressed: ‘If Israel fails in Gaza, the rest of the world will be next’. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also highlighted in a Fox News interview that if Israel ‘doesn’t win now, then Europe is next’.

After Hamas brutally attacked Israel on 7 October, the refugee camp on the shore of Lake Balaton in Hungary was converted into a safe haven for Israeli Jews who wanted to escape with their families from the horrors of war. The camp now houses around 250 people, including 100 children, most of whom have fled from Israel since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.

Although Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen was acquitted by a court of second instance, the legal battle, unfortunately, may not be fully won. As Räsänen wrote in a press release, she hopes ‘the prosecutor will be satisfied with the decision, but if not, I am ready to defend freedom of expression and religion also before the Supreme Court of Finland, and if necessary, even before the European Court of Human Rights.’  It soon turned out that the prosecutor is considering turning to the Supreme Court.

As Kenneth M. Pollack phrased in his The Hill article, ‘a ceasefire now would only lead to more war and more killing in the future.’ Pollack added that ‘when you reward an aggressor and prevent the attacked from fighting back, you simply encourage that aggressor to attack again, and encourage other would-be aggressors to do the same.’

‘It is still hard to believe how quick Western mainstream media outlets were to uncritically share propaganda information provided by a terrorist organization, Hamas, which only two weeks before massacred, kidnapped, raped, burnt, and tortured innocent Israeli Jews and foreigners alike.’

On Wednesday, the Dohány Street Synagogue filled with people for a solidarity service held by the Hungarian Jewish communities. Dr Andor Grósz, head of the Hungarian Jewish Federation MAZSIHISZ, said: ‘The mourning and grief of the Jewish community is shared by Hungarian society,’ adding that the Hamas terrorists ‘brutally violated the Ten Commandments, a gift of the Torah to mankind.’

As an article by Premier Christian highlighted, for Armenians, leaving Nagorno-Karabakh is not just a geographical relocation, but also the act of severing ties with their deeply engrained cultural and religious heritage.

At the recent Peace of Westphalia conference in Münster, the Hungarian foreign minister said the Abraham Accords should serve as an example for resolving other similar conflicts around the world, adding that ‘even though the Middle East seems to be far away in a geographical sense, we all know that whatever happens in the Middle East, it has a direct influence on Europe.’

The Hungarian Jewish leaders and the Israeli Prime Minister discussed issues of Jewish communal life in Hungary and the events that may accompany the possible relocation of the Hungarian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  With the potential move of the Hungarian mission to Jerusalem Hungary would become the first EU country to recognize that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.

According to the 2023 World Watch List compiled by Open Doors, Pakistan is the seventh most dangerous country for Christians in the world. There are around 4.2 million Christians in Pakistan—only 1.8 per cent of the country’s population of more than 229 million people. Pakistani Christians are considered second-class citizens and are discriminated against in every public and private life aspect.

On 23 August, the Ontario Divisional Court dismissed Dr Peterson’s legal complaint against the College of Psychologists of Ontario; therefore, he is forced to comply with the demands of the Ontario College of Psychologists (OCP), which includes going through a so-called ‘specified continuing education or remedial program.’ In a Fox News interview, the famous clinical psychologist recently said that he will comply with the order but will publicize his entire experience so the public could ‘decide for themselves’ about it.

The roots of Christianity in Egypt can be traced back almost two millennia. Coptic Christians, who have their own distinct culture and language, have been living in the country since before the arrival of Muslim Arabs. For the most part, Muslims and Christians coexisted peacefully in Egypt until the mid-twentieth century, when things turned for the worse, due to growing radical Islamism and anti-Christian sentiments.

In the latest episodes of the Reflections from Budapest podcast, Director of the Middle East Action Team at the Religious Freedom Institute Jeremy P. Barker explained that their work aims to promote religious freedom rights for everyone everywhere, recognising and hoping that includes even the smallest and most persecuted religious minorities, whether that’s Christians or Yazidis in the Middle East, or Uyghurs in China and others.

As British MP Ian Paisley Jr phrased it, ‘In recent decades, a new language and culture, foreign to the principles and freedoms that have characterised our shared values for generations, have been thrust upon us. The language contains familiar words but with new, enforced meanings: we are under pressure to assimilate new definitions of concepts like “tolerance”, “diversity” and “progressiveness” when it comes to free speech and dissenting opinions.’

In her address marking Roma Holocaust Memorial Day, Fidesz MEP Livia Járóka said: ‘Almost 80 years later, it is still clear that what happened at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was genocide and a series of crimes against humanity in which innocent European citizens were exterminated on the basis of an exclusionary ideology whose only purpose was organised destruction.’

The ongoing conflict has seen the direct targeting of religious symbols, places of worship and refuge as more than 250 churches of different denominations have been burned down or damaged across the state.  Since the clashes began, 180 people were killed, thousands have been injured, more than 60,000 have been displaced, and more than 12,000 have fled to the neighbouring Mizoram state.