Britannia Radio

Antisemitism And Other Matters: A View From The Shores Of Decency

From the desk of George Handlery on Fri, 2011-03-04 12:01

If you write and read a lot then you will probably run into frustrating pieces. These are the ones that compel you to exclaim, “I wish I would have written this one”.

Below follows the English version of an article that scores above this writer’s level. The subject is important enough to be shared with the reader.

The piece’s significance comes not only from its content but is also a consequence of the venue of its conception and its author’s record. Mr. Jeszenszky seems to display only one negative. That is that he is an old and appreciated acquaintance of your correspondent. To some this circumstance might make even Mother Theresa suspect. However, there are qualities to be mentioned that redeem the author while they also add significance to the piece in which he speaks his mind.

Géza Jeszenszky

Géza Jeszenszky has served after 1989 as Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. Later, at the time of the current PM’s, Mr. Orbán’s first cabinet, he has been the Ambassador in Washington. Earlier he taught in the University of California system. Currently he is a professor at Hungary’s most prestigious university.

Below, Mr. Jeszenszky is addressing himself to the issue of anti-Semitism. His piece is a response to the views of a public figure. It enhances the plea’s interest that local Socialist and left-Liberal detractors, supported by much ignorance and gullibility from abroad, like to depict Hungary as the place where the world’s Nazis congregate to run her government. That effort, strongly stimulated by the yet undigested right-of-center’s electoral triumph, has made Hungary into a test case for the international left and its counter-attack. The unstated question is simple. Can post-Soviet Socialism reverse the general trend from the left to the right. Can, with the help of the international network the gains of the center-right be arrested? Will that be followed by the rehabilitation of leftist governance? The key to all that is to make the world accept that anything beyond the boundaries drawn by the left-liberals and socialist dogma is socially retrograde, Nazistic and anti-Semitic. The irony of the agenda’s latter item is that, in international politics, this element is inclined to condemn Israel, resistance to Islamism, and that it likes to cover up the dozens of millions liquidated by a benignly ignored Stalinism.

After this, let us turn to Mr. Jeszenszky’s anglicized text.

“Apparently Mr. Z. B. really believes the anti-Semitic junk that is being injected into Hungarian minds on the internet and also by some local media sources. The style and the arguments with which he the Fidesz (The Young Democrat Party) and the government is being attacked by the Jobbik (an extremist party in the opposition that is to the right of the governing Fidesz) are below the standards set by our national tradition and the best of European culture.

After the total defeat of Hitler’s Nazi empire and the Nuremberg Process that unmasked its crimes, to the sane it appeared unimaginable that in the future someone would question the horrors committed by National Socialism. It seemed even less likely that these misdeeds would be not only excused but also justified by anyone with a head on his shoulders.

1989 was the time of the total bankruptcy of the Communist idea and, at least in Europe, Communist inspired rule could be liquidated. At that juncture, I assumed that with that, the decades long role as Lenin’s “useful idiots” that Western Europe’s intellectuals played will also come to a screeching halt. The support given by this element to the USSR, her system of vassal states, as well as their apologies for and idealization of Mao’s China, have caused the world inestimable damage.

In our time, in several Western countries two extremes have reemerged. They are the neo-Nazis and the car-torching and business trashing left-anarchists. Both are, with equal anticipatory diligence, preparing for the overthrow of the social order and thus they practice rampage as they try to bring about their goal. Our country has been given a moment of grace at the time of our peaceful and orderly abandonment of Socialism. Whether out of honest conviction or not, outwardly everyone appeared to have realized that Communism has been a tragic and through vile crimes paved Dead End Street. If not in its openly publicized goals, the system has been, at least through its methods, not better than National Socialism’s local mutation, the reign of terror of Szálasi’s (the “Hungarian Hitler”) Arrow Cross (a version of the swastika) thugs.

In 1990 I could not have imagined that in our homeland either one of these creepy ideologies would ever find supporters and followers. Even Mr. Thürmer’s progressive Communist party has refrained from defending the indefensible. At the same time, prior to 1992, also Mr. Csurka (a good but right wing oriented author) felt compelled to protest vehemently the insinuation that he might be carrying the virus of any kind of anti-Semitism.

The signs then were generally favorable. That part of the “intelligentsia” that engaged itself to overcome the old system swore fealty to the ideas developed by I. Bibó (a brilliant intellectual, philosopher and politician sidelined by the Communist party). The majority of them have not only read but also shared the views in Bibó’s 1948 classical and justly famous essay. In it, with his considerable power of persuasion, he dissected with great honesty the malady that led to what we call the “Jewish question”. Considerably fewer people have read or know about J. Gyurgyák’s 788 page “The Jewish Question in Hungary” (2001). The assertions and facts of the tome are unassailable. Following the driving out of the Ottoman Turks, millions have immigrated into historical (pre-1919) Hungary. These newcomers have made a valuable contribution to the reconstruction of the devastated realm. Among them were nearly one million Jews. In a generation or two, the Jews have become Hungarians in their language and culture –as did many German entrants and at least in part the Serbian and Romanian settlers, too. The former’s extraordinarily significant input has greatly improved the country’s economy and culture while it boosted her treasury of scientific and practical knowledge. Jews have fought heroically in the “War of Liberty” in 1848-49 and in World War 1. Among the victims of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet republic (1919), there were more Jews than their share of the total population would have warranted. Admittedly, among the Leninist “People’s Commissars” of 1919, or for that matter in the post-1945 era, that is under Soviet occupation, persons of Jewish origins played a prominent role. However, this element felt absolutely no attachment to anything related to Jewish ethnic or religious standards. At the same time, almost the entire rest of the Jewish population figures among the victims of Communism as they were robbed of their property and persecuted politically.

A decent thinking individual, one whose attitudes are determined by his professed Christianity, must look with abhorrence at the past. He must evince sincerely felt pain when he looks back at the “Jewish Laws” passed after 1938 which imitated the “Nuremberg Laws”. These acts have gravely violated our country’s traditional principle of legal equality. Even worse is what came after this country’s occupation on March 19, 1944 by Germany. Responding to the occupier’s directives but with the active participation of the bulk of the personnel of the remaining Hungarian organs of government, more than six hundred thousand of our Hungarian-feeling countrymen were deported from their country. Subsequently, half a million of these, among them many children were brutally murdered. In my opinion, no retard that denies these facts belongs in jail but in a nut house.

Regarding the consequences of the Shoa in Hungary, one needs to make our contemporaries conscious of a crucial matter. Nearly half of the murdered Jewish Hungarians lived in territories that were lost in the Trianon Treaty after the Great War. During the last war most of these lands were again briefly under Hungarian administration. By destroying this element, the economic, cultural and ethnic weight of Magyardom in these territories has been reduced considerably. With that, we have not yet touched upon the implied moral damage, the shame and dishonor, and the painful way the slaughter lives in the souls of those that survived. Lest we forget, the Hungarian homeland has delivered to the cares of the executioner a significant portion of its committed and loyal citizens. That all this would not have happened without the occupation by Germany and the activities of Eichmann might be true. Nevertheless, the occupation-imposed order does not change most of the humiliating facts of the case.

The knowledge of these antecedents is a crucial pre-condition for the judging and condemning of tendencies that are spreading in our days. In the course of the past few years, we have been confronted on the internet but occasionally even on the pages of the printed media and on some of the channels we hear and watch, with a torrent of malice. We are increasingly exposed to anti-Semitism that comes wrapped in an anti-Israel position, professed friendship for Arabs, or is camouflaged as economic criticism. Meanwhile, some of the anti-Semitism remains open or is hardly hidden. Behind this fanning of the flames of hatred, there is a generous portion of supportive historical ignorance around. And even that is often topped by the outright falsification of the historical record.

It has just now come to my attention that on the “barikad.hu” the Jobbik representative, Zoltán Balczó who is, on behalf of his party, the vice-chairman of the National Assembly (!) is vigorously attacking Fidesz and PM Orbán personally. He does so because the PM nurtures a good relationship to Israel and since he puts emphasis on valued regular consultations with Jewish organizations at home and abroad. According to Balczó, in order to defang foreign criticism, Orbán is “throwing himself into the arms of Jewry”. Allegedly this goes so far that, additionally, he even supports EU membership for the Jewish state.

Is anyone prepared to tell me that this form of press freedom, coupled with the libelous use of the internet, does not require some kind of a controlling supervision? (The reference is to Hungary’s new media legislation. That law is sharply condemned internationally as “censorship” and “dictatorship” by the left.) Or does it suffice if such material receives a critical response in other organs? Alas, this hardly ever happens. Who can tell me, why? The poisoning of wells is considered to be a serious crime. The same is true in the case of the poisoning of the fountains that feed the spirit.

Hungary has no reason to fear Israel. (Some sharp minds claim that “Israel” is hell-bent to “buy” Hungary.) It is of negligible significance that some investment projects, such as erecting casinos, might be, as many think, unnecessary. But I am asking you, is it in the interest of Hungary to sympathize with Arab terrorism once it is directed against Israel? From whom can we expect to benefit more, from the Arab moneychanger in the alley? Or from the return home of our compatriots of yesteryear that have been forced to flee and who now live in Israel or other foreign countries? Is one to think that their willingness to return and to invest their fortunes here to still the country’s paralyzing thirst for capital, constitutes a peril? We all owe a lot to those that create jobs and pay taxes –as had been the case between 1867 and 1914. At that time, foreign capital came to Hungary, and so did the German, Swiss, English and French investors, the innovators and the businessmen. The result led to the quick development of a backward country. Besides Budapest, other cities could also flower and Hungarian industry became competitive. This had been the hope of the conservative Antall government after 1990, and this is the project that crashed after 1994 with the Socialist take-over. If from now on, the laws are sensible and the officials are kept honest, then the case can be repeated.

Now, the Jobbik party is also attacking the Minister of the Interior. Mr. Pintér refused to permit a planned parade they support. The act was to commemorate the February 1945 attempt of the German-Hungarian defenders of Budapest to break out of the encircled city that Hitler declared to be a fortress. What distorted mind does it take to convert treason and the destruction of the city into a celebrated event! On October 15 1944, treasonous officers and the Arrow Cross which was blind to Hitler’s imminent defeat, had with German help, prevented the implementation of Governor Horthy’s cease fire orders. With that and without any rational reason, the country’s war has been prolonged causing added suffering and much devastation. What kind of a Hungarian is the one that approves of that? What are we to think of someone who recalls appreciatively that tens of thousands of Hungarian soldiers were sacrificed so as to enable Hitler to last in his bunker lair for a few more days?

A conclusion emerges in the light of all this. Yes, let us pay homage to the principle of free speech. Let us hold high the cause of the right to assemble. Nevertheless, in the interest of the country and her honor, in certain cases the limits set by decency and common sense must be imposed.”