According to Ambassador Yacov Hadas-Handelsman the Gaza War is not just against Israel and it is not a political strife anymore, but a cultural and religious conflict.
Much of the world agrees that the Palestinians should have, and deserve, a state of their own. It’s a political ideal whose time should have come long ago. But the experience of Palestinian self-government, even in a limited sense, is not promising.
All but one EU Member State, Hungary, have condemned Israel’s potential ground invasion of Rafah, scheduled to happen if all hostages are not freed by the start of the Ramadan. This is not the first time the Orbán administration has stood up for Israel.
Hungary and Czechia have been the only members of the EU that have consistently declared support for the Israeli government, both before and since the 7 October massacres. Last December, they were among the ten nations that voted against a resolution at the UN General Assembly calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
While South Africa alleges that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, it failed to condemn some of the most severe human rights abuses of our times in the past. Pretoria’s assertion that its engagement to prevent grave human rights violations, fulfilling its responsibilities ‘under a treaty obligation to prevent genocide from occurring’ is a political stunt and a blatant attempt to exploit the international legal system.
‘In the end, what for Hamas is a military defeat and a humanitarian disaster has become a resounding political victory. Bringing the Palestinian cause back into the forefront of world attention will for years to come to be the ultimate legacy of the atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October.’
At a recent Rubicon Institute conference in Budapest, historians and Middle East experts attempted to shed light on the complexities of the Arab–Israeli conflict and its regional and international contexts.
‘My message to the Hungarian people is this: The spirit of the Jewish people has taken a lot of hits over the years but we always come together to fight for our future and that is exactly what we will do again. We will all dance again, and I know the Hungarian people will dance with us. Thank you for your unwavering support.’
The Jerusalem Post has learned that the Hungarian and German governments have granted citizenship and issued passports to some of the Israeli hostages abducted on 7 October by Hamas. Some of those hostages have since been released, while others remain captive. The Hungarian MFAT has not yet commented on the report.
In this article, historian László Bernát Veszprémy recounts the story of three Israeli prime ministers who resigned as a result of military debacles that happened under their leadership.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.
