Hungarian political leader questions Holocaust, Israel

JTA

A leader of Hungary’s far-right, anti-Semitic Jobbik Party questioned the Holocaust and claimed that Jews were colonizing Hungary, in an interview with Britain’s Jewish Chronicle.

Marton Gyongyosi, deputy leader and foreign affairs spokesman for Jobbik, also told the Jewish Chronicle in an article published Feb. 2, that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is a “Nazi system.”

Jobbik currently holds 47 seats in the 386-seat Hungarian legislature, and is Hungary’s third-largest party. The party is set to capitalize on Hungary’s current severe economic downturn, according to the Chronicle.

During the interview with the Jewish Chronicle, Gyongyosi questioned whether 400,000 Jews were killed or deported from Hungary during World War II. “It has become a fantastic business to jiggle around with the numbers,” he said.

He called successful Israeli businesses in Hungary a threat and “expansionism.”

“Jews are looking to build outside of Israel. There is a kind of expansionism in their behavior,” he said. He indicated that a 2007 speech by Israeli President Shimon Peres, in which he praised the success of Israeli businesses in the Diaspora, including Hungary, was a threat to his country, saying: ” If Peres is supporting colonization, it is a natural reaction for people to feel that Jews are not welcome here.”

Gyongyosi said Israel was founded by “terrorists” and said that it runs a “Nazi system, based on racial hatred. Look at (Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor) Lieberman, he’s no different than Goebbels. He is a pure Nazi.” Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, he said, means “the Jews don’t have the right to talk about what happened in the Second World War.”

The Jobbik leader also said his party supports Iran. “Iran is in the center of a Middle East axis that Israel and the U.S. want to subjugate and keep under their control. Iran is an extremely peaceful country and never started a war, unlike Israel which has declared wars on anything and everybody around it,” he told the Jewish Chronicle.