Budapest – Hungarian State TV Airs Iranian Leader Calling George Soros ‘Evil Zionist-American’

Budapest – Hungarian Jews condemned a public broadcaster’s airing of an Iranian leader’s attack on Jewish-American billionaire George Soros, calling it anti-Semitic.

On Wednesday Hirado, the main news show of the state MTVA channel, included quotes by Iran’s supreme spiritual leader, Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei, calling Soros “an evil Zionist-American multi-billionaire” who is responsible for destabilizing and defeating former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s regime.

Critics of the broadcast, including Mazsihisz, the umbrella group of Hungarian Jewish communities, say the broadcast risks stoking anti-Semitic sentiment. But others, including the leader of Hungary’s Chabad-affiliated EMIH Jewish group, say the government has not displayed any anti-Semitic tendencies in its fight with Soros.

Soros, whose pro-democracy philanthropies have funded groups opposed to the policies of the right-wing Hungarian government, recently became the subject of hostile statements by top Hungarian politicians.

Soros also funds various Israeli NGOs, many with a critical attitude toward the Israeli government’s policies.

Mazsihisz condemned the inclusion of the quote by Khamenei, saying it echoes the purest and most common form “of anti-Jewish sentiments in the Hungarian extreme-right media,” Mazsihisz said in a statement Friday.

The umbrella group also noted that the MTI state news agency declined to quote Mazsihisz’s statement or report about it, citing, according to Mazsihisz, concerns that it might “damage the credibility of the state media and its business interests.”

Zoltan Radnoti, the chairman of the rabbinical council of Mazsihisz, also condemned the anti-Soros rhetoric aired on public television, labeling it “anti-Semitic incitement during prime time” in a statement.

Even before the broadcast, the campaign against Soros was “not free of anti-Semitism and should be stopped in order to prevent hatred,” Radnoti said. “The hatred which is now spread with taxpayer money.”