Anti-Semitism should always be condemned. But it is somewhat ironic that leaders of Hungary’s Jewish community and Israel’s Ambassador in Budapest are rallying on behalf of a man who demeans Jews and gives millions to anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian organizations. That man who is Jewish by birth, but proud for growing up in an “anti-Semitic home,” is George Soros.
The Hungarian government is fighting Soros, who is campaigning against the Hungarian government’s immigration policies in the effort to force it to open its borders to illegal immigrants. As part of this fight, the Hungarians are attempting to curb the billionaire’s funding of opposition groups, as well as his Budapest-based Central European University by legislating education reforms that would close the institution, unless it complies with the country’s laws.
Soros, dubbed as the “only private citizen who had his foreign policy,” whose efforts to change Hungary’s domestic policies and reverse the law that would shut down the CEU has failed, addressed the European Commission’s annual economic meeting last June. He denounces the “the deception and corruption of the mafia state the Orban regime has established,” and led the European Union to take legal action against the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Orban responded with a billboard campaign featuring a smirking Soros with the caption: Let’s not allow Soros to have the last laugh”. It didn’t take long before Soros, and his supporters evoked his Jewishness and accused the government of anti-Semitism. Orban’s spokesperson responded: “The Hungarian government’s goal is to stop Soros’s migrant campaign, which is supporting the migration of illegal migrants into our country. The government is not criticizing George Soros for his Jewish origin, but for his supporting the growing number of migrants entering in uncontrolled crowds into Europe.” And Hungary is not alone in limiting the number of illegal, mostly Muslim immigrants who pose a great economic and security threat. Other European nations are also taking steps to stem the seemingly endless tide.
As for anti-Semitism, in November 2003, as Operation Iraqi Freedom was underway and anti-American and anti-Israeli/anti-Semitic demonstrations spread throughout Europe, Soros spoke at a meeting of the Jewish Funders Network in New York. Soros claimed that “The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute” to the rise of anti-Semitism. He assured his audience that once Bush and Sharon are removed from office, the world will go back to not hating Jews. “If we change that direction, then anti-Semitism also will diminish. I can’t see how one could confront it directly,” he said. On December 4, 2003, Ira Stoll reported in the New York Sun that Soros declared “Israel “likely” was a big but secret reason for America’s war in Iraq.”
Soros has rewritten Middle Eastern history to better jive with his idea of the “poignant and difficult case” of “victims turning perpetrators.” Soros, much like the virulent anti-Semitic graphic daily propaganda in Arab, Palestinian and Iranian newspapers, has been comparing Israel’s self-defense against repeated attempts of annihilation by the Islamist/Arab terrorists to Nazi atrocities. The successful defense against terrorism, especially preemptive actions, is never appropriate in Soros’ book.
His history of how Israel fought for its independence could have been written by Noam Chomsky or Yasser Arafat. “After the war [World War II], Jews resorted to terrorism against the British in Palestine in order to secure a homeland in Israel,” Soros writes in 2003 in The Bubble of American Supremacy. “Subsequently, after being attacked by Arab nations, Israel occupied additional territory and expelled many of the inhabitants. Eventually, the Arab victims also turned perpetrators, and Israel started suffering terrorist attacks.”
This Soros’ interpretation denies the number of Arab invasions and the brutal tactics used that led Israel to occupy the lands these attacks were launched from in the first place. And as for the “expulsions,” most left of their own accord because the surrounding Arab nations ordered them to leave. The Arab plan was to kill all the Jews as soon as possible and move back. For defending themselves, the Jews are apparently getting what they deserve in Soros’ mind. By surviving Arab/Muslim violence all these years, and by defending themselves, the Jews in Israel and elsewhere bear the responsibility for rising anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activities.
Soros’ comments did not sit well with quite a few public figures: “It’s a warped view of the Holocaust and its aftermath, of Israel, and America,” than the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, fumed to The New York Sun. “It’s outrageous. To call it obscenity is not strong enough a word. It is so perverted and so perverse.” The New York Daily News ran an editorial describing Soros as a “man who lacks even a remotely balanced view of history and the nature of evil. He has demeaned the Holocaust and placed moral responsibility for anti-Semitism on its victims rather than its perpetrators.” Even Democratic Representative Eliot Engle Engle also called Soros statements “morally reprehensible” and advised his “hear no evil/see no evil” Democratic brethren that he didn’t think that “People shouldn’t kiss up to” Soros simply because “he wants to give money.”
Documents hacked from Soros’s global organizations’ network and released on DC Leaks in 2016 revealed not only his funding of groups that follow his globalist (no borders) pro-illegal immigration, anti-Capitalist, anti-Judeo-Christian and Western values agenda, but also pro-Muslim Brotherhood and anti-Zionist, pro- Palestinian activities. These include Adalah, which claims to be an “independent human rights organization” that has been campaigning, as the Palestinians and Iran, against alleged Israeli war crimes, advocating for Israel diplomatic isolation and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. It also funds Israeli Arab organizations’ activities against Israel.
Captain Alfred Dreyfus who loyally served his country, fell victim to anti-Semitic conspiracy accusing him of treason. The public outcry led by Emile Zola and a second trial led to Dreyfus’s exoneration. He was reinstated, promoted, and knighted.
Soros, unlike Dreyfus, is loyal only to himself. His tremendous wealth has allowed him to buy politicians and influence domestic and international politics, which he advances through a myriad of organizations. In the case of Hungary, it is mostly about the government’s threat to close his “educational legacy” – the CEU. The religion he was born into, which he disdains, has nothing to do with his political actions. He personifies this agenda and should be held responsible for his efforts to intervene in Hungary’s, Israel’s the U.S. and a host of other countries.
* This commentary was published in American Thinker on July 11, 2017.