Jobbik parliamentarian provokes protests

“I’m a Jew. I ask to be put on the Jobbik list,” says the sign at a demonstration, which was one of the protests against the words this Monday about “tallying Jews” by Márton Gyöngyösi, representing the far-right Jobbik party in Hungarian Parliament.

The ‘March of Life Foundation’ held its protest in Kossuth Square in front of Hungarian Parliament in which – two days earlier – the parliamentarian accused the Hungarian Foreign ministry of siding with Israel against the Palestinians and said that "I think such a conflict makes it timely to tally up people of Jewish ancestry who live here, especially in the Hungarian parliament and the Hungarian government, who, indeed, pose a national security risk to Hungary." On Tuesday, Gyöngyösi said on his party’s website he was misunderstood.

The Monday development sparked protests from the other opposition parties and they were also condemned by the government also condemned as well as Hungarian and international Jewish organizations as well as the European Commission. His words evoked in many people’s minds that over half a million Hungarian Jews were killed in Nazi Germany in World War II after ‘tallied up’  on lists and transported to concentration camps.

The U.S. Embassy in Budapest issued a statement saying that the “United States utterly rejects and condemns in the strongest terms the outrageous anti-Semitic remarks made on the floor of Parliament by a Jobbik parliamentarian on November 26.  We recognize and support the Government’s immediate rejection of these statements. This type of atrocious, deeply offensive language must be met with immediate and harsh condemnation by all who hear it in any democracy, and particularly by the highest-ranking officials of the Hungarian government. The recurrence of anti-Semitic and other racist statements in the Hungarian parliament demonstrates the need to further empower voices of tolerance and peaceful coexistence in Hungary.”