Anti-Semitism stirs as Hungary goes to polls

[cali]

April 11, 2010

Rabbi Shmuel Raskin and his 50 guests were celebrating the Jewish festival of Passover last weekend when two stones smashed though the double-glazed windows of his home in the centre of Budapest.

Police said they had probably been fired from a sling. The group continued with its ceremonies, but in silence and behind closed shutters. The incident was one of a series of hate attacks in Hungary amid an atmosphere of heightened racial tension in the run-up to today’s general election.

During a recent speech by Gabor Demszky, the mayor of Budapest, a mob chanted “Jewish pigs” and “To the concentration camps”. Election posters have been smeared with yellow Stars of David and anti-Semitic slogans.

Budapest rabbis describe racial epithets being shouted as they walk their children to school, slogans such as “Jews go to Israel” are daubed in the streets, accompanied by swastikas, while cars bear stickers with the slogan “Jew-free car”.

Critics connect the abuse to the rise of the extreme right-wing Jobbik party, which has been accused of anti-Semitism and xenophobia.

The increase in violent attacks on minorities — a dozen Roma (gypsies) have been gunned down in recent years — has coincided with the emergence of Jobbik, which won 15% support in the European elections held in 2009. Opinion polls suggest that it will attract between 13% and 20% today.

<snip>
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7094323.ece

[pampango]

1. NY Times:"Hungarian Right, Center and Far, Make Gains"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/world/europe/12hungar...

Hungary’s center-right opposition party won first-round parliamentary elections here on Sunday, while a far-right party, whose black-clad paramilitary extremists evoke the Nazi era, made significant gains.

With 99 percent of votes counted, the ruling Socialist party conceded defeat to the Fidesz party of a former prime minister, Viktor Orban. Fidesz won 52.8 per cent of the vote, followed by 19.3 per cent for the Socialists and 16.7 per cent for the far-right Jobbik party — a better showing than any far-right party in Hungary since the fall of Communism in 1989. The success of the party, which has railed against “Gypsy crime” and Jews, threatens to tarnish Hungary’s international image and, some analysts say, could undermine its economic recovery from the hard hit it took in the global financial crisis.

Jobbik’s leader, Gabor Vona, 32, is a former history teacher who tapped into a growing nationalism fanned by economic hardship. He is a founding member of the Magyar Garda, an association whose uniforms are reminiscent of those worn by the Arrow Cross, Hungary’s wartime Nazi party. The group, which was outlawed last year but has not disbanded, has revived dark memories of World War II, when Jews and Roma were deported to concentration camps.

Analysts said Jobbik’s growing popularity illustrates how the economic crisis was helping to fuel a regional backlash against minorities, as people look for someone to blame. In Hungary, at least five Roma have been killed in the past two years and Roma leaders have counted about 30 firebomb attacks against their people’s homes.