(JTA) – At a meeting with Hungarian President Janos Ader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed concern at a “dangerous” resurgence of anti-Semitism in Hungary and called on the Hungarian government to take action.
"There is concern in Israel and the Jewish world over a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Hungary,” Netanyahu said Tuesday during the meeting in Jerusalem. “Such a dangerous phenomenon must be uprooted before it can spread."
Ader responded that he was firmly opposed to any manifestation of anti-Semitism and invited Netanyahu to visit Hungary.
The two men met in part to ease relations in the wake of the rise of the far-right, anti-Israel, anti-Roma Jobbik Party, which entered parliament in 2010 as Hungary’s third largest party. Jobbik politicians use openly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric.
Ader was in Israel to attend a ceremony Tuesday in the Knesset marking the 100th birthday of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust. Israel originally had invited the speaker of the Hungarian Parliament, Laszlo Kover, to the ceremony, but withdrew the invitation after Kover attended a memorial service honoring the Nazi collaborator and author Jozsef Nyiro.
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