US Ambassador ‘Behaves Like a Governor’, Claims Foreign Affairs State Secretary of Hungary

  • 5 Dec 2023 6:04 AM
  • Hungary Matters
US Ambassador ‘Behaves Like a Governor’, Claims Foreign Affairs State Secretary of Hungary
US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman “behaves as if Hungary were the 51st state of the United Sates and he were its governor,” Tamás Menczer, the foreign affairs state secretary, told public television, referring to recent remarks by the ambassador made at the opening ceremony of the 12th Budapest Jewish and Israeli Film Festival, alluding to anti-Semitism on the subject of posters depicting Alex Soros.

Menczer said: “We are a country with a statehood somewhat older than that of America … and even in the most primitive political disputes, they don’t argue that the Hungarian government would slam George Soros and his son because of their Jewishness.”

“We usually refer to [Soros and his son] as talented Hungarians, but the problem is that they use their talent for bad purposes: they support migration and war,” Menczer said.

“We support peace and we say ‘no’ to migration … that decision by Hungarian voters must be respected and it is a problem that the US ambassador doesn’t,” he said.

Menczer referred to the appreciation of international Jewish organisations, the prime minister of Israel and the Israeli ambassador to Hungary, suggesting that “Hungary is one of the best places in the world” in terms of security for people with a Jewish identity.

He added that anti-Semitism, on the other hand, “has never been such a great problem in the US as now”, with Jewish people only representing 2% of the population but suffering some 55% of hate crime cases. Fully 88% of Jews viewed anti-Semitism as a problem in the US, he added.

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