In response to a question at his press conference on Wednesday, where he announced sanctions against one Hungarian and two Russian citizens, US Ambassador David Pressman gave a quite shocking explanation why the anti-Semitic leftist opposition politician Marton Gyongyosi was invited to the US Embassy for a Seder dinner on the first day of the Jewish Passover.

Mr Gyongyosi was invited not in spite of him being anti-Semitic, but precisely because of it, Mr Pressman said, adding that he believes it is important for people with different views to debate together. This is quite an eerie explanation, meaning that

Mr Pressman is ready to talk to Nazis about freedom on a Jewish holiday.

Ambassador Pressman claimed that Gyongyosi had apologised for his earlier statements, but this is not true, the Hungarian news portal origo.hu recalls. The Hungarian politician had previously said that all Israeli citizens were a national security risk.

„So this Israel, and every single citizen of this Israel, I am convinced, wherever they may be in the world, not only in Hungary, ab ovo, even at a glance and from a distance, and without knowing who they are, I am convinced that they are a national security risk.”

This means that Gyongyosi condemned an entire national community and all its members on explicitly racist grounds, indiscriminately, regardless of who they were. This hate-mongering statement, reminiscent of the Nazi era, comes as little surprise from the leftist politician, who sparked a huge outrage in 2012 when he demanded the listing of Jewish MPs in Parliament.

“In the context of such a conflict, it is high time we assessed how many people of Jewish origin live here, and especially how many are in the Hungarian Parliament and government, who pose a certain national security risk to Hungary,”

Mr Gyongyosi said at the time. His remarks in 2012 led to general outcry. Hungarian and international Jewish organisations, Hungarian political parties and public figures strongly protested against it. Despite this, he received growing support from his party, which support propelled him to Brussels as an MEP and made him his party’s current president.

At another public forum in 2013, Mr Gyongyosi went so far as to mock Holocaust victims, practically downplaying the tragedy.

Speaking about the Wallenberg and Holocaust Memorial Years, he said that

„A good example of this is last year’s Wallenberg Memorial Year, which we thought would end on 31 December, and we can breathe a sigh of relief and say that the big year of mea culpa, remorse and whatnot is behind us, and we can enter 2013 carefree. But we could hardly get any breathing space, as the Orban government announced the Holocaust Memorial Year for 2013, which continues to this day. We have to keep facing new measures that are introduced in the spirit of the Holocaust Memorial Year,”

the left-wing politician said with outrage. It can be no coincidence that the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which has a dedicated focus on Nazi war criminals, ranked Mr Gyongyosi and the Jobbik party as the seventh on its global list of the „top 10 anti-Semites and haters of Israel” in 2012, the Hungarian daily Magyar Nemzet recalls.

In light of all this, it is utterly incomprehensible how Mr Gyongyosi could have been invited to the Seder dinner given by David Pressman, the US ambassador in Budapest. Andras Heisler, president of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities (Mazsihisz) said that he only found out on the spot that Mr Gyongyosi was among the guests and he was seated right opposite him according to the seating order. The Jewish leader added that he did not consider it a „faultless” approach that he had not been informed in advance about Mr Gyongyosi’s participation.