Following talks with Donald Trump at the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to reduce trade barriers for American goods and create a more balanced trade relationship between the two allies.
Hungary is withdrawing from the International Criminal Court, following years of scepticism toward it. The announcement coincided with the arrival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest for talks with his Hungarian counterpart, Viktor Orbán.
According to Head of the Prime Minister’s Office Gergely Gulyás, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will pay an official visit to Hungary in the next few weeks. The visit was set in defiance of an international arrest warrant for the Israeli leader.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants on Thursday for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defence minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri on charges of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán condemned the decision, stating that Netanyahu will not be arrested if he visits Hungary.
At the weekly government press briefing last week the Hungarian PM’s chief of staff, Minister Gergely Gulyás stated that Hungary would not enforce the ICC arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu. He declared that it is not appropriate to use a court as a political tool, and it should be remembered that the ‘utterly ruthless, disgraceful and despicable terrorist attack’ suffered by Israel was the root cause of everything that is happening in the Gaza Strip.
The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has sought arrest warrants for several leading Israeli politicians and members of the Hamas political leadership, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Allies of Israel, led by Viktor Orbán and Joe Biden, have described the prosecutor’s decision on the Jewish state’s leadership as absurd and shameful.
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’.
Can Netanyahu survive as prime minister in the wake of the Hamas attack? Are Jews really safer in Israel today than in the Diaspora? Hard questions that need to be asked.
Meanwhile, PM Orbán of Hungary offered his moral support for Israel, writing ‘our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Israel in these dark hours’.
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.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.
