What would they have to gain by endorsing those measures criticizing Israel, in dissonance with all their efforts over the past decade?
E.g.
July 2018
Right-wing newspapers in Hungary and Israel have carried reports and damning quotes from employees of civil rights NGOs, allegedly working with European partners in trying to influence legislation in the Hungarian parliament. It has all fed into the hysteria being whipped up by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party against refugees and those trying to help them. Earlier this month, Politico revealed that the Israeli company Black Cube carried out a sting operation designed to smear the nonprofits ahead of April’s parliamentary election. [...]
“Orbán and Netanyahu have joint values,” says the Hungarian government’s spokesman, Zoltán Kovács. “They share political pragmatism instead of dogmatic ideology. You can see it’s working. These two nations are facing similar challenges with similar solutions.” [...]
The legendary political strategist Arthur Finkelstein – master of the dark arts of negative campaigning, who created Netanyahu’s devastatingly effective “Peres will divide Jerusalem” slogan in the 1996 election – was recommended to Orbán and masterminded his 2010 reelection campaign. The New York State-based Finkelstein, who passed away last year, only made short, usually secret, appearances in the countries where he advised. But he would send his associates to supervise matters up close. The man Finkelstein sent as project manager for the 2010 Orbán campaign was his partner, George Birnbaum, who had previously lived in Israel and worked for Netanyahu as a senior aide in the ’90s. Members of the Chabad synagogue in central Budapest remember the Orthodox Birnbaum going there for prayers and Shabbat lunch, so he could be in walking distance of Orbán’s Saturday rallies.
Ties have been ongoing between Likud and Fidesz at various levels for years, with delegations from both parties visiting each other. A whole range of advisers, businesspeople and religious leaders also profit from the relationship. “I never imagined how tangled the web between Netanyahu and Orbán was,” says a senior Israeli official who recently worked on an issue of concern to both countries. “But the moment I became involved, I realized just how many millionaires and rabbis and opinion-makers are shuttling between Jerusalem and Budapest.” Ultimately, though, the relationship is down to the two leaders. [...]
Netanyahu has adopted the Orbán approach [to the EU]. While he is pro-EU whenever it comes to trade relations, he and his ministers have become increasingly aggressive when it comes to politics. This included refusing to meet with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini when she was scheduled to be in Jerusalem for a conference last month (Mogherini canceled her arrival as a result). [...]
“Major changes are happening in Europe. It is becoming less liberal and more nationalist,” says a senior Israeli diplomat. “Orbán is leading this change and Netanyahu has identified him as a key ally.”
"Similar challenges" include the EU, Muslims, and liberal Jews.
Netanyahu’s embrace of a man such as Orbán reveals a radical
transformation in how Israeli leadership views its own mission, and his
demonization of Soros reveals his own willingness to truck in antisemitic rhetoric to further his own political agenda. He can make common
cause with Bannon or Orbán because their enemy is his enemy: liberals and Muslims. If Netanyahu’s left-wing Jewish critics are no longer
seen as Jewish but rather as enemies of the Jewish people, then attacking Soros through a hook-nosed caricature is not antisemitic. Through
this intellectual sleight of hand, people who might otherwise be seen
as antisemites now become friends of Israel, while antisemitic attacks
become legitimate criticism of Israel’s enemies. And so it is that the
government of Israel, a state founded in large part to protect Jews from
the evils of European antisemitism, is now fully in bed with some of its
most virulent contemporary manifestations.
So to now go against all this shared history, Orbán expects EU to pay big (again), probably.
