US Ambassador accuses the government of anti-Semitism

Pro-government commentators angrily rebuff the Ambassador’s claim that the billboards featuring Alex Soros are expressions of anti-Semitism.

Addressing the Budapest Jewish and Israeli Film Festival last week, US Ambassador David Pressman acknowledged that Jewish people can go about their daily lives in Budapest without fear of attacks but that is the most basic responsibility of any government. Yet, he saw the recently launched poster campaign against foreign interference featuring Alex Soros (see BudaPost, November 24) as carrying an antisemitic message.

In Magyar Nemzet, Ottó Gajdics calls the ambassador a ‘dumb activist’ clumsily playing the role of a diplomat. No one in their right mind, he writes, thinks of Soros Junior’s Jewish ancestry when they look at the government’s poster. Wanton, unfounded accusations of anti-Semitism may well stoke hatred against the Ambassador and those who agree with him, Gajdics warns. In his concluding remark, he asks whether that was precisely what Mr Pressman was aiming at.

On Pesti Srácok, Áron Ambrózy writes that he cannot decide whether Mr Pressman is ‘wicked or dumb’ but tends to believe the latter. He asks if living without fear is basic, as the ambassador said, why Jewish people do not enjoy it in the United States and Western Europe nowadays.

Tags: anti-Semitism, Pressman, US Embassy