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.’

The level of escalation in the Middle East has risen significantly after Israel struck a Houthi-controlled port in Yemen over the weekend, marking the first such attack since the war between Hamas and Israel broke out last October. The retaliatory strike follows a deadly drone attack by the Yemeni Houthis on Tel Aviv.

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.’

‘Incidentally, Netanyahu’s failure is not because the Biden administration is withholding weapons. The heart of the issue is the Islamic indoctrination of Palestinian Muslims. Just like organized crime in southern Italy, whether it is called the Mafia or the ‘Ndrangheta, capturing and imprisoning the militants or killing them will not end Hamas.’

Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah threatens to use Syrian refugees as a political weapon while also warning Cyprus of a possible attack if the island nation assists Israel militarily. The group’s ability to manipulate refugee flows and its readiness to use military force against EU member states necessitate an effective and coordinated response from the European Union.

Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Israel Israel Katz visited Hungary recently for the first time since he took up office. He met with President of Hungary Tamás Sulyok, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó, and the leaders of the Hungarian Jewish communities. The main aim of the visit was to determine, with Hungary soon taking over the presidency of the EU, how Budapest and the Union would take action against anti-Israel efforts in the next six months.

Péter Szijjártó held a joint press conference with his Israeli counterpart Israel Katz this Monday, where they discussed the horrific attack on Israel by the terrorist group Hamas on 7 October 2023, as well as the subsequent increase in antisemitism in the West.

‘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.

‘Everybody’s awoken now, and they are angry, very angry. And that really is what is meant by the end of the innocence. Because before then, even though we knew there was antisemitism, and even though we knew Hamas was a threat, no one understood its severity,’ Avi Benlolo of The Abraham Global Peace Initiative told us in an exclusive interview after the screening of his short documentary The End of the Innocence about the Hamas attacks.

Avi Benlolo of The Abraham Global Peace Initiative directed the film which showcases the terror of the villains, and the bravery of the heroes of the fateful 7 October attacks. Before the screening, distinguished guests, such as Israeli Ambassador to Hungary Yacov Hadas-Handelsman made short speeches.

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.

‘Being a conservative in Berkeley is like you’re surrounded by Marxists. I think sometimes Hungary feels the same, surrounded by these European progressive elites,’ John Yoo, former US government official and Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley stated in an interview with Hungarian Conservative.

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.

Foreign pro-Palestinian demonstrators disrupted a conference in Budapest on Tuesday where Israel’s ambassador to Hungary Jakov Hadas-Handelsman was also speaking. At around the same time, anti-Israel graffiti flooded the Hungarian capital. For many months, such phenomena were unknown in Hungary, but now it seems that the conflict and hatred are being imported from abroad.

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.

Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian President and a potential successor to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, were reported dead following a helicopter crash in the northern area of the country on Sunday. The European Union, China, and Russia have already expressed their condolences, while the United States had remained silent at the time of writing. Israeli officials stated that the Jewish state was not involved in Raisi’s death.

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.

‘It is ironic…that the protesters, while having legitimate positions, have remained altogether silent on the atrocities committed by Hamas, to say nothing of their main sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran. In truth, ever since an estimated 750,000 Palestinians lost their homes amidst the creation of the State of Israel 1948, there have been American Jews deeply unsettled by Israeli policies toward both the Palestinian refugees and Arabs living under Israeli rule. These critics of old into the American Jewish establishment, such as leaders and staff members of the American Jewish Committee.’

Xi Jinping’s visit to Europe—the first in five years—is expected to be mainly business. The Chinese president is coming primarily to conclude new deals in the three countries he visited: France, Serbia, and Hungary. According to Carlos Roa, a guest researcher at the Danube Institute, Western analysts view the visit of the large Chinese delegation with concern for this very reason, as the trip seems more like a geopolitical signal.

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.

‘Our continent is effectively under siege—we can see that if we are willing to move away from the narratives that interpret migration solely as a ‘refugee issue’ and acknowledge that mass migration can also be a tool for terrorism and destabilization. The number of irregular migrants arriving in the Canary Islands more than tripled in January this year compared to the previous year. Germany is overwhelmed. Reception capacity was already exceeded in 2023, when 330,000 asylum applications were submitted in just a year, mostly from Muslim countries.’

‘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 the latest episodes of the Danube Institute’s podcast co-chair of the Israeli Sovereignty Movement Nadia Matar spoke about the nature of radical Islamist terrorism. To demonstrate her point, she showed a flag from the city of Bethlehem with the Arabic phrase ‘We will murder Jews on Saturdays and we will murder Christians on Sundays’ written on it.

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.

In a recent op-ed John Bolton argues that the White House failed to recognize that the real conflict in the region is not between the Palestinians or Arabs and Israel, but Iran’s war against Israel.

According to multiple media sources, Israel may have conducted a retaliatory strike against Iran on Friday. However, Iranian officials claim they are uncertain whether it was an external attack or an infiltration from within the Persian state.

‘The patterns that emerge from examples drawn from 150 years of terrorism and counterterrorism are clear. When a tactic works, it is copied and adapted to new times and new situations. Attacks on civilians, women and children strike terror and provoke governments to react. When governments overreact and kill large numbers of civilians, regardless of the provocation, governments lose support, lose legitimacy, and in the modern world, soon find both popular opinion and later the world community will turn against them, making ultimate defeat inevitable.’

‘Reality does not seem to bother some journalists, politicians and influencers. They are not interested in offering solutions, for instance by exerting pressure on the Palestinians to hand over those responsible for terrorism; all they are interested in is condemning Israel’s actions.’

Early in March Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli visited Hungary and met Hungary’s Minister for European Union Affairs János Bóka, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó, several Hungarian Jewish community leaders, while also giving presentations on the Gaza War. Jews in Hungary can practice their faith in safety in contrast to many other European nations, he noted during his visit.

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.