"Anti-Semitism in Hungary is encouraged by the government, contrary to the officially stated principle of zero tolerance," David Pressman sharply criticized the Hungarian government in his speech at the opening of the 12th Budapest Jewish and Israeli Film Festival - read on atv.hu. Gergely Karácsony, mayor of Budapest, also participated in the event.

Pressman mentioned a yellow star

In his speech at the Budapest Jewish and Israeli Film Festival on Wednesday, the ambassador of the United States to Hungary formulated a specific interpretation of the posters of the Hungarian government.

- In Hungary, some officials like to present a country where anti-Semitism is not tolerated, where Jews are not attacked on the street, and which is a safe place for them

Pressman stated. He added that the same officials will tell a "different story". According to him, the "other story" is embodied in the poster campaigns.

- They put up billboards showing a grinning Jewish billionaire ruling over Hungary, and the poster warns "don't let Soros have the last laugh." Or on other posters, the same billionaire controls the politicians with a puppet string. In a recent poster, the son of the same billionaire can be seen appearing behind the president of the European Commission, as a shadow, the US ambassador to Hungary listed.

We don't need to put a yellow star on these posters to understand the context of their appearance and the meaning behind the images

said the diplomat.

According to Pressman, “anti-Semitism is not determined by the physical safety of Jews. This is a grotesquely low standard, the most basic responsibility of any government, for all its citizens. But the fact is that wherever anti-Semitism is allowed, or sometimes even encouraged, Jews are not safe.”

He added:

"some people confuse physical security with conventional security, but the two are not the same."

In addition to the posters, the ambassador also criticized the fact that, in his opinion, Hungary "rewrites or rehabilitates the selective history of Hungarian officials and leaders who voluntarily participated in the genocide, and refuses to condemn those who support these acts."

Pressman referred to the Hungarian government's position in favor of Israel, as well as the fact that Hungary hosted the Israeli football team, which he thanked, but believes that this

"doesn't nullify the revisionism of government officials, or absolve them of responsibility for the posters they put up, over and over again injecting dangerous imagery into their policies."

The US ambassador warned that it is "dangerous to allow political gain to stand in the way of human decency" and that "the path from safe street walking to broken windows and vandalism to brutal attacks is short and dangerous. We should not wait for bloodshed before condemning anti-Semitism, which history has shown so often leads to it," Mandiner writes.

The harder you try, the more unpleasant it becomes, Mr. Ambassador

"In Hungary, we apply zero tolerance to anti-Semitism, which also applies to demonstrations supporting terrorism," wrote Zoltán Kovács on the social platform X (formerly Twitter). The Secretary of State responsible for international communication and relations responded to one of the posts of the American ambassador, David Pressman, and stated: it is not simply that "Jews are not attacked on the street" in Hungary. Jewish life is experiencing a renaissance in Hungary.

The harder you try, the more unpleasant it becomes, Mr. Ambassador. The time for anyone to take his claims of anti-Semitism seriously is over

- said Zoltán Kovács. He asked the question: has the ambassador seen what is happening, for example, on university campuses in his own country?

No one can take seriously what he's trying to teach us

- can be read in the secretary of state's post.

This is not the first time that David Pressman has been critical of the Hungarian government. He recently expressed concern about the Sovereignty Protection Bill, which he said could be aimed at criminalizing or intimidating independent civil society and media organizations. The ambassador has also complained that the Hungarian government spreads the Kremlin's terrifying anti-American propaganda, but he also admitted that he perceives almost nothing of this on a daily basis, reports Magyar Nemzet .

Photo: MTI/Szilárd Koszticsák