Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son, appeared in Budapest on Saturday as part of the CPAC Hungary 2026 conference, one of the flagship events of the conservative camp supporting Prime Minister Viktor Orban, held just weeks before the country’s elections.
On stage, Netanyahu did not hold back in praising his hosts. “We are deeply grateful for the friendship and support of Prime Minister Orban and Hungary. We have no better friends in Europe,” he said. According to him, Hungarians also benefit from a special relationship with Israel: “I think Hungary also has no better friends in the Middle East.”
Netanyahu described Hungary as a particularly safe country for Jews and Israelis: “Israelis have discovered Hungary in recent years and fallen in love with it. We all feel very safe here, it is almost like a second home for me.”
He went on to praise Orban’s policies, particularly regarding immigration and security, saying, “In Hungary, there is no terror. Society is more homogeneous, there is social cohesion compared to Western Europe, which suffers from weak leadership.” He argued that immigration policies in Western countries have led to “public unrest” and security problems.
However, most of his remarks focused on the war with Iran, a topic which is not trivial for a Hungarian audience, which is already considered supportive of Israel.
Netanyahu's son claims Iran aims to destroy Western civilization
Yair Netanyahu described Iran as “the main source of terror and chaos in the Middle East” and warned that it is a “fanatical and irrational regime” seeking “to destroy Western civilization.” According to him, Iran operates through proxies such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, while advancing nuclear and ballistic missile programs that could reach Europe and even the United States.
At this point, he also introduced a charged historical comparison: “This war is preventing World War III. It is like stopping Nazi Germany in the early 1930s when it was still weak.”
He later linked the leadership of US President Donald Trump and his father to the figure of Winston Churchill: “Both admire Churchill and learned from the mistakes of the 1920s and 1930s. You need to confront totalitarian regimes before they become too strong.”
He also emphasized that the Iranian people themselves are “freedom-loving” and that Israel and the United States are not only acting against the regime but also “giving the Iranian people an opportunity to regain their freedom.”
Beyond that, Netanyahu expanded on the broader ideological struggle, arguing that “radical Islam wants to destroy Israel, the United States, and Europe,” and presented Israel as “the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population is growing rather than shrinking.”
Netanyahu’s presence at the conference, alongside recorded videos from Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself, raised the difficult question of whether this was a public diplomacy effort during wartime, given that Hungarians are already largely supportive of Israel, or a political alignment with Orban in Hungary’s domestic arena.
Sara Netanyahu also flew abroad during the war, and is currently in New York, from where she is expected to travel to Washington for a conference hosted by First Lady Melania Trump at the State Department and the White House.