Extremist politicians in Hungary, Poland and other Eastern European countries are reverting to blaming Israel and the Jewish people in general for their own national shortcomings.
Extremist politicians in Hungary, Poland and other Eastern European countries are reverting to blaming Israel and the Jewish people in general for their own national shortcomings.
The Fidesz Party, successful in recent Hungarian elections, launched verbal attacks on the "Jewish capital . . . which wants to devour the entire world." A Warsaw political professor stated: "Anti-Semitism is crucial for the Polish right. The number of Jews in Poland today is minimal, but the anti-Jewish prejudice serves as a code for a general hostility to diversity and to Polish liberal democracy."
One Polish member of the European Parliament went so far as to say that he "will apologize for the killing of Jews on Polish soil in World War II when Jews apologize for killing Poles."
Denis MacShane of Newsweek summed up serious concerns that all should have: "To anyone with a half sense of European history, the parallels with an older Jewish-baiting politics can no longer be dismissed" ("Europe's New Politics of Fear," April 16, 2010, emphasis added). (Source: Newsweek.)
