When Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán, who is nobody’s fool, offered Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu a state visit to Budapest last year, he knew a storm would follow. Netanyahu has now arrived in Hungary – and the backlash has duly followed.
Orbán has vowed not only to ignore the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant against Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war between Israel and Hamas; he has said his country will withdraw altogether from the ICC.
During a joint press conference yesterday with Netanyahu, Orbán said the ICC had become a ‘political court’. Netanyahu hailed Hungary’s ‘bold and principled’ decision to withdraw from the court.
Netanyahu hailed Hungary’s ‘bold and principled’ decision to withdraw from the court
Needless to say, the human rights establishment sees things rather differently. Demands for Hungary to detain Netanyahu have already come from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other rights groups; Orbán’s decision to ditch the ICC altogether will undoubtedly be characterised as full-on dictatorial and a bare-faced attack on the rule of law.
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