On the historic occasion of the first-ever visit by an Israeli Prime Minister to Hungary, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban lays out the details of a new relationship with Israel and the V4 Visegrád countries – Hungary, Poland, The Czech Republic and Slovakia – in matters of mutual security and trade.
Reuters At a meeting in Hungary between Viktor Orban and Benjamin Netanyahu, the leaders of four eastern European nations declared that Europe should better appreciate Israel’s key role in Middle Eastern stability, and condemned Brussels’ current policy towards the Jewish state.
The comments were the latest example of divergence between west and east Europe, where questions of national sovereignty, migration and civic freedoms have also stirred friction. U.S. President Donald Trump lent support this month to Poland, target of criticism by the EU he has disdained, with a visit to Warsaw.
Netanyahu met the Visegrad Four leaders of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, who backed Israel and called for an improvement in the EU’s relations with the state. “I think Europe has to decide whether it wants to live and thrive or it wants to shrivel and disappear,” Netanyahu told the leaders of the eastern EU states behind closed doors in Budapest.
Mr. Netanyahu said that it is both a great honour for him to be the first Israeli prime minister to attend a V4 summit, and also a great opportunity. Mr. Orbán told the press that the Israeli prime minister had invited the V4 prime ministers to Israel, and that they had accepted his invitation to meet in 2018 in Jerusalem.
“The Visegrad Four shares the Israeli view that external border defence is key,” Orban told a press briefing. “Free movement of people without controls raises the risk of terror.” Orban has been criticised in the EU for erecting a razor wire border fence and refusing to accept migrants under EU agreements, preferring “ethnic homogeneity”.
Kormany The Czech Republic prime minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, also highlighted that the EU and Israel have a shared interest in strengthening relations and removing the obstacles to their cooperation with each other. Mr. Sobotka stressed the importance of talks on the situation in Syria and the fight against terrorism and illegal migration, and he welcomed the Israeli prime minister’s proposals, the implementation of which is supported by the V4.
Polish prime minister Beata Szydło noted the unprecedented nature of the V4 meeting with the Israeli prime minister, in which the parties spoke about security, the migrant crisis, the fight against terrorism and development. Cooperation with Israel must be enhanced, Mrs. Szydło added.
Slovak prime minister Robert Fico stressed that the leaders’ meeting had not only been important because of its content, but also its symbolism, as in Europe “we often talk about each other”, but not often enough with each other.
Israel has joined Hungary in declaring Hungarian-born George Soros an “enemy of the state.”
Born in Hungary to Jewish parents, Soros “continuously undermines Israel’s democratically elected governments by funding organizations that attack the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself,” it said. Soros was also the main funder behind the Arab Spring and is currently spending more than $500 million for NGOs and human traffickers to bring hundreds of thousands of African Muslim invaders into Europe by boats.
The Hungarian government last week launched a billboard and television ad campaign (below) seeking to discredit Soros’ pro-Muslim support and financing of mass illegal immigration views. The posters and billboards show a smiling Soros with the caption “Let’s not allow Soros to have the last laugh!” and a notice claiming that 99 percent of Hungarians reject illegal Muslim migration.
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