(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and their wives, today (Wednesday, 19 July 2017), at the
Dohany Street Synagogue in Budapest, met with Hungarian Jewish community leaders.
Prime Minister Netanyahu:
"First of all, I want to thank you, Mr. Prime Minister, for the – and your wife – for the warm welcome to my wife and me and our delegation, and the ability to close a stark circle that has been waiting for too long.
Here in 1860, the rebirth of the Jewish people began with the birth not very far from here of our modern Moses, Theodor Herzl. He was a genius, but it wasn’t merely his intellect and his capacity for analytic prophecy. It was his spirit, his soul. When he saw in his mind’s-eye the anti-Semitic fire that could consume European Jewry, he could have escaped, or he could have just gone to his grave without doing anything. But he performed the most miraculous transformation in the history of nations. He brought a people seemingly dead back to life, and he said the solution to the problem, the Jewish problem as they called it, is to have a Jewish state.
He found a partner here in this city. Herzl is well-known; Max Nordau is less well-known, but he was much more well-known than Herzl in the 1890s. He was the preeminent, one of the two, three preeminent intellectuals of the Belle Epoque. Another genius. These two genius Jews of Hungary formed a partnership that launched modern Zionism and is the reason why I stand before you today as the prime minister of the one and only Jewish state, the sovereign State of Israel. It is because of Theodor Herzl and Max Nordau.
With the birth of Zionism also came the great destruction that Herzl saw, the destruction of…not merely the physical destruction of synagogues and everything that was Jewish.
Prime Minister, I want to thank you. We just went through a magnificent synagogue. I saw this unbelievable synagogue, but I know that you restored a synagogue of the Jews of Serbia, in another country, Hungarian Jews, and I believe it’s going to be opened in October, and we will send a representative to this event.
But this also commemorates the great destruction that consumed – exactly as Herzl foresaw – the Jews of Europe. And he said, he said 50 years before the State of Israel was born, “It may not come in my lifetime, but 50 years from now, there will be a Jewish state.” And he was right. He envisioned what that Jewish state would be like. He said – not everything. I cannot… I’ll find you one or two things that were not prophesied by him. For example, the language: He thought we’d speak German. He didn’t hit the mark on that one. We recovered and rebuilt an ancient language 3,000 years old. Our son, who was the Bible champion of Israel at the age of 15, could read the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Book of Isaiah, when he was seven years old, exactly as it was found.
So we took this language that we kept and we had to transform it to cyber security and to automotive technology and to milk production and to everything. But we did it. As Herzl said, this will be… He said in the east, in the vanguard of the east, amid the despotisms, there will be this sparkling jewel – of science, of technology, of progress. He envisioned all this. And guess what? He said there will be a Jewish state in 50 years. He said that this would be a great fountain of human wisdom and it happened.
Now we’re back here. The first time that a sitting Israeli prime minister comes to visit Hungary. Unbelievable.
Well, there’s only one first time. After that, there’ll be a second time and a third time, and many more such visits. And the first time that I’ve had the privilege of meeting with the
Visegrad Group, and the next time will be as a group in Israel. We always say next year in Jerusalem. I say: Next year in Jerusalem, Visegrad in Jerusalem.
And this is a significant event because it means that Israel is assuming its rightful place among the nations. It means that the Jewish people are assuming their rightful place among the nations.
There is a resistance to that. Yes, there are anti-Semitic movements still abounding. And some of it is traditional anti-Semitism and some of it is the new amalgamation of anarchist, Left anti-Semitism that joins hands with radical Islam. Unbelievable. They should be opposite each other, but they unite in the hatred of the Jews.
And I came here from Paris, where I met the French president, Emmanuel Macron. By the way, when I left him, I said, “Do you know what Emmanuel means?” And he said, “God is with us.” I said, “Well, God be with you.”
Emmanuel Macron said this: He said that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism. You cannot say, “I don’t have any problem with Jews; I just don’t think there should be a Jewish state.” “I’m not anti-American. I have no problem with Americans; I just don’t think there should be an America.” So obviously, he was hitting here on a [inaudible], and there are, there is this camouflaged anti-Semitism that is directed at the rebirth of the Jewish people, this great achievement that was begun by Herzl and continued by us.
I think it’s very important that countries stand against this de-legitimization of Israel, which is the de-legitimization of the Jewish people, and I thank you, Prime Minister Orbán, for standing up for Israel in these forums against this new form of anti-Jewish agitation.
You spoke yesterday very strongly against anti-Semitism in Hungary. You spoke about it in its current forms, and you spoke about it also in its previous forms – the sins, as you say, performed by previous governments. You were very open it, including in our conversation.
I think this is important. I think this is something that the world has heard. And it’s very clear to me that this something that the world should hear continuously.
I believe that we have a golden opportunity. I think that the Jewish people are blessed with great ingenuity. Other peoples have it too, but our survival depends on it, and therefore we’ve made it a passion.
The Jewish people are like a special kind of tree. We have deep roots in our traditions, in our memory, in our history, in our land. But we grow branches up towards the sky. We ask questions. We bring answers and we keep asking again and answering again.
This is a tree with ancient roots and branches for the future. It’s a special combination. I don’t believe that we would achieve our rebirth if we didn’t have both – the memory of ancient times and the hope for better times. And it’s this special combination that now unites us with so many other countries, including here in Visegrad, with Hungary and with others who wish to have a better future.
We are proud of our past; we are eager to seize the future together. We shall do so in great friendship, friendship between the State of Hungary and the State of Israel, friendship between the Hungarian people and the Jewish people.
And I see this visit here, this meeting here, next to this synagogue, as a testament to this friendship."
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