Probe over Hungarian MP's 'Jewish list' dropped

Prosecutors in Budapest reject complaint about Marton Gyongyosi of the Jobbik party who called Jews a “security risk.”

By JTA, JEREMY SHARON
Jobbik political party leader Gyongyosi 370 (photo credit: REUTERS)
Jobbik political party leader Gyongyosi 370
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Prosecutors in Budapest on Wednesday rejected a complaint about a lawmaker who called Jews a security risk.
Rabbi Slomo Koves and Daniel Bodnar of Hungary’s Chabad-Lubavitch community submitted the complaint over statements made in parliament in November by Marton Gyongyosi of the ultranationalist Jobbik party, in which he suggested that the government draw up a list of Jews in Hungary who posed a “national security threat.”
Gyongyosi and the Jobbik party are fiercely critical of Israel and have a history of inflammatory and controversial comments on issues pertaining to the Holocaust and the Jewish state, as well as against his country’s Roma population and homosexuals.
Following the outbreak of Operation Pillar of Defense, for example, Gyongyosi, who is Jobbik’s spokesman for foreign affairs, accused Israel of continuing “its genocidal activities against the Palestinian people.”
Jobbik is the third-largest party in the Hungarian parliament with 47 out of a total of 386 seats.
The Central Investigative Chief Prosecutor’s Office in the Hungarian capital, however, concluded that Gyongyosi’s remarks could not be classified as inciting to hatred, as Koves and Bodnar had argued.
In a statement Thursday, Koves wrote, "It is our conviction that this rejection is a further sign that the current Hungarian judicial practice is unable to provide an adequate response to the phenomena of incitement of hatred."