Netanyahu and Orbán: An Illiberal Bromance Spanning From D.C. to Jerusalem

Netanyahu and Orbán: An Illiberal Bromance Spanning From D.C. to Jerusalem
haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-the-netanyahu-orban-bromance-that-is-shaking-up-europe-and-d-c-1.6290691
archive.fo/QZQ4W

The parallels between the current prime ministers of Israel and Hungary are astonishing, so it is perhaps unsurprising they have forged a strong alliance over the past decade and learned new tricks from each other. The third and final part of a special report

Anshel Pfeffer | Budapest
Jul 18, 2018 9:05 PM

“If you want to understand Bibi, look at Orbán. And vice versa,” says one Budapest resident who has spent time with both the Hungarian and Israeli prime ministers. Indeed, the parallels between Benjamin Netanyahu and Orbán are breathtaking. Both men first came to power in the 1990s, as the youngest prime ministers in their countries’ histories. Both lost an election after only one term in office and then spent nearly a decade in opposition. Both subsequently returned to the Prime Minister’s Office and have since won three consecutive elections using xenophobia, a siege mentality and the weakness of their liberal-left rivals to perpetuate and deepen their hold on power.

The similarities don’t end there. Netanyahu and Orbán both lead relatively small nations, each with some 9 million citizens. Yet despite their size, each leader has leveraged his position: Netanyahu into that of a global statesman who has the ear of both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin; Orbán as the figurehead for other nationalist and populist politicians who are disrupting the policies of the European Union’s Brussels establishment. Netanyahu and Orbán, veterans of three decades of politics, were both harbingers of the Trump era.


‘Political pragmatism’

Hungarians on the right and left find very little common ground these days, but both supporters and opponents of Orbán are in clear agreement that he and Bibi are close. “Orbán and Netanyahu have joint values,” says the Hungarian government’s spokesman, Zoltán Kovács. “They share political pragmatism instead of dogmatic ideology. You can see it’s working. These two nations are facing similar challenges with similar solutions.”

Kovács, who was a historian before he went into politics, has a point. Hungarians and Israelis share similar geopolitical circumstances: Small nations with a unique language and culture, nestling between much larger regional powers and national groups, and with aspirations to punch far above their weight. Both Netanyahu and Orbán have a keen understanding of their respective nations’ histories and have been very adept at using it to their political advantage in domestic politics and, increasingly, on the global stage.

This is Orbán’s first official visit to Israel as prime minister, following Netanyahu’s first official visit to Budapest last July. But the two have known each other for over a decade, sharing a web of political contacts and advisers reaching from Jerusalem to Washington. Orbán has visited Jerusalem in a private capacity at least twice before, once when both men were in opposition a decade ago.

“They have given each other advice on political messaging – including on what phrases to use in speeches,” says one senior Israeli official. “And, of course, Bibi introduced Orbán to Finkelstein.”

The legendary Republican political strategist Arthur Finkelstein – master of the dark arts of negative campaigning, who created Netanyahu’s devastatingly effective “Peres will divide Jerusalem” slogan in the 1996 election – was recommended to Orbán and masterminded his 2010 reelection campaign. The New York State-based Finkelstein, who passed away last year, only made short, usually secret, appearances in the countries where he advised. But he would send his associates to supervise matters up close. The man Finkelstein sent as project manager for the 2010 Orbán campaign was his partner, George Birnbaum, who had previously lived in Israel and worked for Netanyahu as a senior aide in the ’90s. Members of the Chabad synagogue in central Budapest remember the Orthodox Birnbaum going there for prayers and Shabbat lunch, so he could be in walking distance of Orbán’s Saturday rallies.

Ties have been ongoing between Likud and Fidesz at various levels for years, with delegations from both parties visiting each other. A whole range of advisers, businesspeople and religious leaders also profit from the relationship. “I never imagined how tangled the web between Netanyahu and Orbán was,” says a senior Israeli official who recently worked on an issue of concern to both countries. “But the moment I became involved, I realized just how many millionaires and rabbis and opinion-makers are shuttling between Jerusalem and Budapest.” Ultimately, though, the relationship is down to the two leaders.

Attached: Benjamin Netanyahu Viktor Orban.jpg (1200x1200, 146.03K)

Other urls found in this thread:

clevelandjewishnews.com/news/world_news/ahead-of-visit-documents-list-hungary-pm-s-pro-israel/article_0d14b607-55a3-5181-948b-454f061aad6d.html
jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/Hungarian-Holocaust-survivors-to-receive-reparations-319064
archive.fo/kTEYZ
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Triguboff
jrbooksonline.com/some_pics_from_cecile_tormay.htm
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Combative stance

Early in his political career, Orbán presented himself as a center-right and even liberal politician. But he took a sharp turn rightward in 2009 and began ruthlessly playing the nationalist card. Netanyahu’s career has pursued a similar trajectory (Likud still called itself a “national-liberal party” until quite recently).

In both cases, the influence of Finkelstein – who once said his proudest achievement was having made the term “liberal” a dirty word in American politics – can be discerned. His political style of distilling entire campaigns into a few “catch words,” playing on the voters’ prejudices and deepest phobias, were as effective in Hungary and Israel as they were in the United States.

For most of their relationship, Netanyahu – who is nearly 14 years older – was the senior and more prominent partner. But over the last two years, as new populist politicians have come to the fore in Europe and the United States, Orbán’s stature has grown and they are more equal today. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Netanyahu – who believed Hillary Clinton would win and was anyway wary of Trump’s unpredictability – remained firmly on the fence. Orbán, on the other hand, didn’t hide his preference for Trump, expressing support for his policies during the election. Netanyahu also took cues from Orbán, trying in recent months to use the issue of asylum seekers in Israel as a rallying point for the Likud base, with tactics borrowed from Orbán’s weaponization of Europe’s refugee crisis to boost his own flagging popularity in 2015.

Netanyahu has also been encouraged by Orbán’s combative stance toward the mainstream establishment of the EU and the most influential EU leader, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The governments of Israel and Hungary both have a complicated dual relationship with the EU and Germany.

Change can’t happen fast enough for either of them. Under the Obama administration, Orbán’s government was frozen out due to corruption allegations against senior Hungarian officials and the prime minister’s closeness to Russian President Putin. Despite Orbán’s affinity with Trump, he wasn’t high on the new administration’s priority list. “The message that Orbán is in the Trump camp didn’t filter down fast enough to the State Department,” says a well-connected official in Budapest. “Bureaucracies are slow everywhere and Orbán looked to Netanyahu to help him out with that.”

But Orbán didn’t wait for Netanyahu to pull Israeli levers in Washington. Early in 2017, the Hungarian government hired two Israelis to work for them in D.C.: Tzvika Brot, a former journalist and now Likud’s mayoral candidate for Bat Yam (a suburb of Tel Aviv); and Ariel Sender, a veteran lobbyist and former adviser to right-wing politicians in Israel. Their company led the Republican Party’s outreach to U.S. citizens living in Israel in the 2016 election, and they also received a $45,000 monthly retainer to lobby for Orbán in Washington.

Those efforts weren’t enough, though: During Netanyahu’s visit to Budapest last year, Orbán asked for assistance, and Israel’s ambassador and Netanyahu confidant Ron Dermer was set to work on opening doors to the administration.

Netanyahu, Trump and Orbán now share a common goal in disrupting EU policy. For that, Netanyahu has been courting not only Orbán but the Visegrád Four (whose other members are Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia). To secure the support of the Visegrád governments, Netanyahu was willing last year to reject the Hungarian-Jewish community’s appeal for support in its demand that the Orbán government stop its anti-Semitic campaign against the Hungarian-born Jewish-American financier George Soros. And only three weeks ago he signed a joint statement with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, absolving Poland or the Polish nation as a whole “for the atrocities committed by the Nazis and their collaborators of different nations.” This statement led to an unprecedented announcement by historians at Yad Vashem, who rejected Netanyahu-Morawiecki’s Holocaust revisionism.

In return, along with other like-minded EU members, Orbán has obstructed EU condemnations of Israel on various matters, as well as a condemnation of the U.S. Embassy move to Jerusalem. He is now trying to get his Visegrád colleagues to agree to hold a five-way summit in Jerusalem next year (like the one Netanyahu attended last year in Budapest). Netanyahu is hoping the four Central European countries will defy the joint EU policy and agree to follow the Trump administration in moving their embassies to Jerusalem, but that may be a bridge too far for them at present.

Officially, Hungary is still sticking to the EU position of supporting the two-state solution and not recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. But while he is in Israel this week, Orbán will make another gesture by visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem. And he will be defying EU practice, if not official policy, by not including a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on his schedule as well. “We didn’t get an invitation from the Palestinians,” was the blank-faced explanation offered by Kovács, Orbán’s spokesman.

Even if Netanyahu doesn’t get the formal recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital during this visit, both leaders still believe they have a long and mutually beneficial relationship ahead of them. With Trump’s help, they both intend to remain figureheads for the new populist wave of Western politics for years to come.

Just stop.

No dice, Trumpkike.

You faggots turned the board into a fucking Trumpshill news aggregate.
You reap what you sow.

This. Payback is a bitch.

Ahead of Visit, Documents List Hungary PM’s Pro-Israel Actions
clevelandjewishnews.com/news/world_news/ahead-of-visit-documents-list-hungary-pm-s-pro-israel/article_0d14b607-55a3-5181-948b-454f061aad6d.html

Ariel Kahana | JNS Jul 18, 2018

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was due to arrive in Israel on Wednesday for his first state visit to the country. Although he has been attacked in Israel and abroad as being anti-Semitic, Israel Hayom has obtained two documents that detail numerous actions Orban and his government have taken in support of Israel and Jews since he entered office in 2010.

As Israel Hayom reported this week, Orban will not visit the Palestinian Authority, and is scheduled to visit the Western Wall on Friday in violation of European Union policy. Although this is Orban’s first state visit to Israel, he previously visited to attend the funeral of former President Shimon Peres in 2016.

The first document obtained by Israel Hayom was written by the Hungarian Foreign Ministry and lists Orban’s demonstrations of support for Israel in international forums, including: Hungary’s refusal in April 2015 to sign a letter signed by 16 other EU nations that demanded special labeling for goods produced in Judea and Samaria; a visit to Israel by Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto in November 2015 during which he announced that Hungary opposed that policy; Hungary’s refusal in December 2017 to join the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and Croatia in condemning U.S. President Donald Trump’s declaration that the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; and Hungarian and Czech opposition in May this year to an official condemnation by the European Council on the status of Jerusalem, which caused the council to drop the initiative.

The second document reviews actions taken by Orban’s government to combat anti-Semitism.

“In Hungarian society, there are undoubtedly anti-Semitic voices, but they do not reflect the majority. President Orban has stressed a number of times that he has zero tolerance for anti-Semitism,” the document says.

The document’s 16 pages list actions including changes to the legislation on compensation paid to Holocaust survivors living in Hungary; increases of 50% in pension payments to Holocaust survivors; changes to the Hungarian constitution to exclude anti-Semitic statements from protected freedom of expression; the criminalization of Holocaust denial; the prevention of the anti-Semitic Hungarian Guard organization from entering parliament; and the establishment of a dedicated institution to discover and monitor expressions of anti-Semitism.

The document also outlines steps taken in the field of “education and commemoration,” such as government funding for free screenings of the Oscar-winning Holocaust-themed film “Son of Saul”; the construction of a memorial to Holocaust victims; the repair of Jewish cemeteries; making Holocaust Studies a required school subject; and financial support for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Fund to preserve the museum at the site of the Nazi death camp.

According to the document, the Orban government has also worked to reopen synagogues and consistently condemns anti-Semitic incidents.

Orban is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Prime Minister’s office on Thursday. The leaders are also scheduled to have dinner with their spouses.

What the actual fuck is this shit? Why are we letting jews slide our catalog with this attempt of theirs at regaining favor?

So every other thread being Trump worship isn't enough for (((you)))?

lolwut? imkikey did that retard


keep reporting. don't forget to look at board log to see if the report was dismissed and which vol did it. then, screencap and post in metathread. its going to take a coordinated effort to get the vols to do their job. they've also been allowing mass-necrobumping and have been dismissing my reports with prejudice. this has to be stopped


OH THIS FUCKING THREAD AGAIN
at least moshe got the archive link this time, i guess

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Are you retarded or illiterate? No one here supports any manner of jew.

>>>/reddit/ is for people who let their feelings override fact. You, in other words.

>So every other thread being Trump worship isn't enough for (((you)))?
both sets of shills need to >>>/TheDonald/ and leave Zig Forums alone, tbh

The thing I worry about most


I know democracy is a tool already used against us and has only contributed to the destruction of our people and culture, so it's six of one half a dozen of the other.

Zig Forums exposes the jew, no matter where it lies. Zig Forums is a board of truth, no matter the implication of the truth. I doubt we could NOT talk about Trump and uphold anti-judaism and truth.

Fuck off.

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But what are they getting out of Hungary?

jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/Hungarian-Holocaust-survivors-to-receive-reparations-319064
archive.fo/kTEYZ
Jews extracting more wealth from whites. What a fucking surprise.

It used to be Caesar.

And? Yeah, world leaders meet up. Big deal.

So in the actual real world, and not in this echo chamber, Israel is ran by what is an essentially right-wing government at the moment. Netanyahu's party has felt more pressure from the Zionists of Israel as time has gone on, and has received SOME international condemnation from the now crumbling social democracies and neoliberal governments of the West. Orban's situation is somewhat similar to Israel's. It would be within both of their interests to forge new ties in the face of the collapsing political power of the international left.

You mean jews.

Lol, Jews, Anglos, African-Americans, Hispanics, Migrants, G***ans, French, and other assorted scum. The delusion that there is no European left is too deep in this board. Most leftists support Palestine.

Here's your real world you prick.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Triguboff
Also known as more debt and higher house prices.
Taking Australian money and sending it to Israel.

I never said I was a supporter of Israel, I just know the implications of OP. No one seems to be able to actually critically analyze things around here when it comes to Israel. Israel is a cancer, and so are it's inhabitants. I just KNOW that some people are going to whine about Orban doing a thing with Israel.

inb4 you sperg out because people aren't 100% perfect and are therefore 100% bad in your shill logic.

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I don't trust these rich people. Nationalism is just another word to them.


You have reddit spacing in all of your posts. You might like to lurk a little more before you post again.

Daily reminder that this type of "news reporting" is CorrectingTheRecord at its best.

Neither Hungarians nor other people on the actual right in Europe (not just those opposing the most extreme policies of EU) are wary of jews.

Everyone that has lurked at least two years understands the sovereignty undermining of the left and its funding from jews.

The jew slowly maneuvers himself to corrupt his enemies by simply smiling. A dangerous game Orban is playing, I hope he knows he's actually playing such a game of life and death for him and his people when dealing with jews.

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Two nationalists fighting (((globalists)))

Somewhat related, as in to Hungary's history:
These pictures are related to the communist take-over of Hungary in 1919.

Some pictures from Cécile Tormay's An Outlaw's Diary
jrbooksonline.com/some_pics_from_cecile_tormay.htm

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I've always advocated for Zig Forums to support Israel and Jews and Israel, and Shame those who have not returned to their homeland. We must D/C the Zionist and Globalist Jews/good goys.

Deport all Jews to Israel
Deport all blacks to Liberia

>>>/p01/

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Yeah, and black back you Mormon fucks.

I would agree pre-Isreal having nuclear weapons.

You can promote idiotic things like that all you want but you're still a fool.