Sunday

28th May 2023

Opinion

The Orban-Netanyahu mutual support nexus

  • Those who have long admired and supported Israel as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East should have good reason to rue the fact that Israel has succumbed to the malign influence of Orbanism (Photo: Hungarian government website)
Listen to article

Following Benjamin Netanyahu's victory in Israel's general election, Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orban tweeted "What a great victory for Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel! Hard times require strong leaders. Welcome back!"

According to the NGO Atlatszo which seeks to promote transparency and accountability in Hungary, advisers associated with Fidesz visited Israel over the summer to help the Netanyahu election campaign.

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Become an expert on Europe

Get instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

Netanyahu shamelessly recycled election propaganda that had been used by the Fidesz campaign in 2014.

The parallels between the two leaders can be seen in the campaign to denigrate and delegitimise political opposition and ethnic minorities, in the attempts to muzzle the independent judiciary, in the exploitation of religion to promote nationalism and most disturbingly, perhaps, in the efforts to co-opt extreme rightwing parties as a means to entrench power.

The fact that Hungary has not been made to pay a significant price for its illiberal policies would only have encouraged Netanyahu and his Likud party to replicate the model that has served Orban well.

This matters because the EU's inability to rein in Hungary's abuses of power sends a signal to other illiberal leaders that they can also get away with attacks on democracy.

The fact that Orban was able to hold up an €18bn aid package to Ukraine in return for obtaining billions of euros in EU cash demonstrates that Hungary has the leverage to counter European pressures. France, Germany and Italy are among the countries that have called for the EU to go easy on Orban.

Orban's defiance of his critics emboldens would-be autocrats everywhere. In 2010, the Hungarian leader extended the terms of judges who showed him loyalty, while others were forcibly retired and replaced by justices supportive of his government.

Orban has also extended his control to the police authorities. Leading figures in Netanyahu's Likud party have not hidden their desire to neuter the judiciary and the media.

They plan to use Israel's Knesset to override the Supreme Court and thereby prevent it from striking down laws that are unconstitutional and illegal. As in Orban's Hungary, the Likud and its allies seek to change how judges are selected, and bring in purely political appointments.

It is Orban's hostility to the EU consensus which has made him very useful as a Netanyahu ally, with the incoming Israeli government expected to take a very hard line over policy towards the Palestinians.

In the recent past, the previous Netanyahu government took advantage of divisions within Europe to prevent an EU consensus on issues such as settlement expansion.

Yet the reforms sought by Netanyahu and his allies could have more damaging consequences than those that are playing out in Hungary.

If the new government gets its way and the courts are forced to toe a political line, there will be fewer restraints on deeply-controversial policies such as legalising West Bank settlements that were not recognised even by previous Israeli governments, evictions of Palestinians from their homes and suppression of Palestinian civil society.

The Likud's coalition partners are pushing for Israel's annexation of the West Bank.

Netanyahu's collaboration with Israel's ultra-nationalist right also strongly resembles the approach taken by Orban.

By adopting characteristics of radical nationalist subculture over the years, the ruling Fidesz party in Hungary has incrementally aligned itself with Our Homeland.

This is a party that is openly racist, irredentist, anti-immigrant, homophobic, anti-Semitic and anti-Roma, advocating a "white, pure Hungary" that must remain a "white island" in Europe. Our Homeland and its public campaigns serve as a testing ground for Fidesz which is only too happy to exploit its extremist agenda and pick up its ideas.

Yet Netanyahu has gone further still, forming an alliance with the extremist Jewish Power party led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, a man who has openly supported terrorist attacks against Palestinians. Ben Gvir is a disciple of Meir Kahane, a Jewish fascist who was the leader of the Kach party which was banned in the late 1980s because of its racist policies. Kahane was ostracised across the political spectrum.

Ben Gvir has been appointed as Israel's minister of public security, putting him in charge of the police and giving him enforcement authority in the West Bank.

Ben Gvir's presence in the government has emboldened extreme ultra-nationalist settlers who have stepped up their attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. Netanyahu has also appointed the openly homophobic Avi Maoz, to an influential post in Israel's Ministry of Education, echoing Orban's crusade against gay people in Hungary.

Orban welcomes Netanyahu's election victory because he believes that Israel has clout on the global stage.

Yet paradoxically, Netanyahu's electoral triumph serves as an endorsement of Orban's illiberal orientation, at the very time when it has suffered a setback elsewhere over recent weeks, with the defeat of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and the poor performance of Trump-backed Republicans in the US mid-term elections.

However, those who have long admired and supported Israel as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East should have good reason to rue the fact that Israel has succumbed to the malign influence of Orbanism.

Author bio

Azriel Bermant is a senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations, Prague, a former research fellow in the arms control and regional security programme at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), Tel Aviv University and the author of Margaret Thatcher and the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

Anita Tusor is a research assistant at the Institute of International Relations Prague.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author's, not those of EUobserver.

What a post-Netanyahu Israel means for EU

Under Benjamin Netanyahu, the EU-Israel Association Council meetings, supposed to be held at regular intervals and set the tone for progress on political and economic issues, have not convened since 2013.

EU diplomats unsure how to handle Netanyahu

EU diplomats are hoping Israel’s PM didn’t mean what he said on the two-state solution. But if he did, they have few ideas how to change his mind.

EU's shameful silence in face of Orbán disinformation deluge

In last month's 'State of the Nation' address in Budapest, an isolated Viktor Orbán outlined a strategy to ramp up his anti-EU disinformation campaign. European institutions must find a way to fight back, writes Hungarian MEP Katalin Cseh.

Poland and Hungary's ugly divorce over Ukraine

What started in 2015 as a 'friends-with-benefits' relationship between Viktor Orbán and Jarosław Kaczyński, for Hungary and Poland, is ending in disgust and enmity — which will not be overcome until both leaders leave.

The EU needs to foster tech — not just regulate it

The EU's ambition to be a digital superpower stands in stark contrast to the US — but the bigger problem is that it remains far better at regulation than innovation, despite decades of hand-wringing over Europe's technology gap.

EU export credits insure decades of fossil-fuel in Mozambique

European governments are phasing out fossil fuels at home, but continuing their financial support for fossil mega-projects abroad. This is despite the EU agreeing last year to decarbonise export credits — insurance on risky non-EU projects provided with public money.

Latest News

  1. How the EU's money for waste went to waste in Lebanon
  2. EU criminal complicity in Libya needs recognition, says expert
  3. Europe's missing mails
  4. MEPs to urge block on Hungary taking EU presidency in 2024
  5. PFAS 'forever chemicals' cost society €16 trillion a year
  6. EU will 'react as appropriate' to Russian nukes in Belarus
  7. The EU needs to foster tech — not just regulate it
  8. EU: national energy price-spike measures should end this year

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. International Sustainable Finance CentreJoin CEE Sustainable Finance Summit, 15 – 19 May 2023, high-level event for finance & business
  2. ICLEISeven actionable measures to make food procurement in Europe more sustainable
  3. World BankWorld Bank Report Highlights Role of Human Development for a Successful Green Transition in Europe
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersNordic summit to step up the fight against food loss and waste
  5. Nordic Council of MinistersThink-tank: Strengthen co-operation around tech giants’ influence in the Nordics
  6. EFBWWEFBWW calls for the EC to stop exploitation in subcontracting chains

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. InformaConnecting Expert Industry-Leaders, Top Suppliers, and Inquiring Buyers all in one space - visit Battery Show Europe.
  2. EFBWWEFBWW and FIEC do not agree to any exemptions to mandatory prior notifications in construction
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersNordic and Baltic ways to prevent gender-based violence
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: Economic gender equality now! Nordic ways to close the pension gap
  5. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: Pushing back the push-back - Nordic solutions to online gender-based violence
  6. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: The Nordics are ready to push for gender equality

Join EUobserver

Support quality EU news

Join us