State Department official: Hungary must do more to combat anti-Semitism

By JTA

Hungary’s government must do more to condemn political anti-Semitism, the US State Department’s anti-Semitism envoy has said in a letter to Jewish groups. “Prime Minister Viktor Orban strongly denounced anti-Semitism in his address to the World Jewish Congress in Budapest last month,” said the 25 June letter from Ira Forman, the envoy, to a number of US Jewish groups that had written Secretary of State John Kerry in mid-May about the phenomenon.

“While we were encouraged by his statements, we believe the government must do more to condemn publicly the incendiary rhetoric of the opposition Jobbik Party,” Forman said in the letter. He added that State Department officials “regularly” raised the matter of anti-Semitism with their Hungarian counterparts, and that “we will continue pressing for action.”

The 14 May letter from the Jewish groups had asked Kerry to raise this issue personally in any dealings he has with Hungarian officials. It noted instances in which Jobbik figures had called for the creation of a list of Jewish public officials and labeled Jews a national security risk.

Signatories of that letter included the World Jewish Congress.