Hungary Far Right Challenges Jews to Debate
Days after one of his colleagues admitted to having Jewish roots, a far-right Hungarian politician challenged the country’s Jewish communal leader to a debate.
Gabor Vona, the leader of the Hungarian nationalist party Jobbik, said he wants to show Slomo Koves, who heads the Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation, that Jobbik is not anti-Semitic.
“Jobbik has never had and will never have any program point, proposal or idea which discriminates between Hungary’s inhabitants on the grounds of ethnicity and religion,” Vona told the website Politics.hu.
Jobbik members have used anti-Semitic rhetoric repeatedly in the past. Politics.hu reported that Koves wants to organize Jews and other Hungarians to combat anti-Semitism.
Last week, a regional leader of Jobbik, Csanad Szegedi, revealed that he is of Jewish descent.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
