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Can Viktor Orbán’s Defeat in Hungary Be a Role Model for Israel?

The path to defeating Netanyahu may hinge on unity across ideological divides.

On Saturday night, April 25, Israeli protesters against the extreme right-wing government led by Prime Minister Netanyahu marched to the Hungarian Embassy in Tel Aviv carrying Hungarian flags. They shouted, “As one bloc, we’ll win together,” “Ultra-ultra-right is a failure,” and “The time has come to overthrow the dictator.” They were celebrating the defeat of right-wing populist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The irony was that, in previous pro-democracy demonstrations against the attempt to undermine the independence of the courts, freedom of the press, and academic freedom, the protesters shouted, “We don’t want to become Hungary!” However, now that Orbán has been defeated, Hungary has become a symbol of the struggle against antidemocratic, autocratic leadership in Israel.

Orbán’s defeat was also a defeat for his allies Trump, Netanyahu, and Putin. While Netanyahu didn’t go as far as Vice President JD Vance did in flying to Budapest to express the Trump administration’s support for their ally and role model, he did call Orbán to express support for his reelection.

New Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar’s victory has inspired all of the pro-democracy forces around the world. It suggests that it is possible to defeat illiberal authoritarian forces. What has to be analyzed now is how to interpret the victory of Magyar and his Tisza (Respect and Freedom) Party, and how that can be applied to Israel, the United States, and other countries where the struggle between democratic and antidemocratic forces is taking place.

One of the elements being discussed is the fact that Magyar was a member of Orbán’s right-wing Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Alliance) party and holds many right-wing views, and his former wife was even a minister in the defeated prime minister’s government. Thus, is the winning formula for the right, center, and left-wing opponents of the illiberal leaders to join forces behind a younger leader who holds right-wing positions on nationalism and immigration, eschewing corruption and repressive policies regarding the press, academia, etc., while focusing on the economy? That was the formula in Hungary.

That is how former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett interprets it. Bennett was a member of Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party and director of the Yesha (Judea, Samaria, Gaza) Settlement Council in the West Bank. Yet as prime minister in a rotation agreement in 2021 together with the centrist Yair Lapid, he was ready to form a government coalition with all of the anti-Likud right, center, and left parties. It included for the first time a Palestinian-Israeli party as a full member of the government coalition, the Ra’am (United Arab List) moderate Islamic party headed by Knesset member Mansour Abbas. His government even had a Palestinian-Israeli, Issawi Frej, from the left-wing Meretz Party, as minister of regional cooperation. To his credit, Bennett has never been accused of corruption. He also said that one of the first acts of a new government would be to........

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