Marton Gyöngyösi, a far-right Hungarian politician, proposed drawing up a list of Jewish people who “pose a national security risk.” Gyöngyösi of the Jobbik party said the aim is to “asses how many people of Jewish origin there are here and especially in the Hungarian parliament and the Hungarian government, who represent a certain national security risk.” Jobbik is a right-wing opposition party and has 44 out of the 386 parliamentary seats.
Gyöngyösi later apologized and said his only aim was to “to challenge the government’s ‘one-sided support’ of Israel in the Gaza Strip conflict” and “to call attention to the threat posed by government members and in the parliament by Hungarian-Israeli dual citizens.” Demonstrations have been taking place in Budapest since his announcement last week with participants wearing armbands with yellow stars, a reference to World War II. Both religious groups and non-governmental organizations expressed their opposition to the proposal. The ruling party FIDESZ said in a statement that “the government follows the policy it has on any notions of this kind: it strictly condemns any extremist, anti-Semitic or racist comments.”
