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Europe
Hungary
July 2024 Europe invaded - warnings from Hungary and Poland about migration. Sitek, a Polish soldier on duty at the frontier with Belarus, was an easy target. As he tried to close a hole in the border fence someone holding a makeshift weapon - a knife taped to a tree branch - rammed it through the gap straight into his chest. Sitek, 21, died a few days later on 6 June. His murder was little noticed in the West, but it caused fury across Poland. Sikorski, the foreign minister, demanded that the Belarusian authorities hand over his killer. They are unlikely to agree. Poland’s border fence is 5.5 metres high, runs for 186 kilometres and is topped with razor-wire. So far this year there have been 17,000 attempts to breach it - and 90 per cent of those caught have Russian visas. Polish officials say that the flow is organised by Russia and Belarus to destabilise Poland. Europe’s borders are under assault from highly-organised, violent armed gangs. People trafficking is a multi-billion dollar business. During the first half of 2023 Hungary’s southern frontier was the pressure point. The two sets of barriers have been heightened to four metres and reinforced with razor wire, night vision and thermal cameras. But they can still be crossed. Migrants, mostly young men, daily besieged the fence. The Serbian side was divided up between different armed gangs. Each controlled a section and anyone passing through had to pay protection money. The frontier was closed to the media during the campaign for the European elections. But video footage of the southern fence obtained from the Hungarian National Police Headquarters shows the ferocity of those attempting to force their way across. Several migrants are armed, either with a pistol or what seems to be an assault rifle. Others fire slingshots into Hungary. The breaches are swift and coordinated. The border guards frequently drive up the path between the fences, or run after the migrants, at which point they either speed up or return to Serbia. The murder of Sitek, and those trying to break through Hungary’s southern frontier, are part of a continuum that reaches back to the migrant crisis of August 2015. Hundreds of people were camped out all around Keleti station. I focused on speaking to the migrants about their stories. But now, with hindsight, I wish I had pushed harder. Many questions still linger. How had Europe’s borders simply collapsed? How had hundreds of thousands of people simply traipsed through the continent? Many used smartphones and apps to plot their routes, sharing information on messaging groups. Who was paying for the wifi, the electricity and the extension leads where the migrants were charging their mobile telephones at Keleti? How did they know to sit quietly each morning in concentric circles and place a photogenic boy in the middle? Each time a television crew passed by, the boy held up a piece of cardboard emblazoned with the words Syria and Germany with a heart in the middle. And why was my coverage, like the coverage of most journalists, so sentimental and sympathetic? After all, this was an organised invasion, not just of Hungary, but of Europe. Instead of writing sob-stories, we should all have been asking much tougher questions. Hungary responded by building a secure fence along its southern frontier and deploying border guards to stop the migrants. This caused a predictable storm of outrage, as though a country defending its own - and the EU’s - southern border from an attack on its sovereignty was an affront to human rights. The following month I interviewed Viktor Orbán. He was on fine form, enjoying the world’s attention, but understandably puzzled about the barrage of criticism. “We are the only country in the last month to take seriously and put real effort into following the Schengen regulations. For that we are criticised. That is the strangest story I have seen since we joined the EU.” Orbán was open about his determination to keep Hungary a Christian country and not allow substantial Muslim immigration. Muslim communities live in parallel societies and do not integrate, he said. “I am speaking about culture and the everyday principles of life such as sexual habits, freedom of expression, equality between men and women and all those kind of values which I call Christianity.” Other countries were of course free to allow parallel societies. “But we Hungarians would not like to have it.” Hungarian officials repeatedly warned that it was impossible to know who was coming in. Later it was revealed that Europe’s collapsing frontiers provided cover for Islamist terrorists. General Bodnár told Pancevski of the Sunday Times that seven of the nine terrorists who carried out the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, in which 130 people were killed, passed through Hungary. In total 14 members of isis terror cells were based in Hungary and used it as a gateway to western Europe. Some took part in the Brussels terrorist attacks in March 2016 that claimed 32 lives. “Terrorists were mingled with the migrants from terror,” Bakondi, Hungary’s chief security adviser, told me recently. Many of the migrants had destroyed their papers and passports. “The people who were arriving had no travel documents at all. So their identity was established totally at the mercy of what they were saying.” In an article, Soros called for the EU to accept ’at least a million asylum-seekers a year for the foreseeable future”’and provide €15,000 for each asylum seeker for two years, to help cover the costs of housing, health care and education. These funds would be raised by issuing long-term bonds, he added ’helpfully’. The article was a gold-plated gift for the Orbán government, already engaged in a bitter culture war with Soros, his Open Society Foundations (OSF) and Central European University in Budapest. I asked the OSF what role, if any, it had played in the 2015 crisis. It directed me to a statement issued that year, denying that either Soros himself or the OSF ’had funded the production or distribution of materials to aid people smugglers’ However, the OSF said it had funded organisations in the region which provided legal assistance to migrants and refugees, which monitored and documented their reception on arrival, as well as for ’emergency response efforts and longer-term initiatives to ease the crisis’. Angela Merkel’s decision to admit one million mostly Muslim migrants in the summer of 2015 is still reshaping the continent. The results of the European elections show a surge in support for hard-right and 'far-righ't parties, in part because few centrist politicians will speak frankly about the impact of mass migration. The 2015 migration crisis was a shock, but the liberal consensus meant that open debate on immigration was stifled, says Lloyd, author of the forthcoming Their Iron Indignation: Dispatches from Europe’s Far Right Revolution: The EU, centrist governments and the liberal consensus meant that anyone who was against mass immigration was perceived as a racist and against foreigners. It inhibited speech and maybe even thought. So far Hungary has spent 650 billion forints (approximately £1.4 bn) on defending its (and Europe’s) southern border. Finally, after nine years, a senior EU official is due to visit. The border is quieter now after a sustained crackdown last year by the Hungarian and Serbian police and security services. “We would like to guarantee our internal security to keep away illegal migrants most of whom were moved by organised crime,” says Bakondi. “Most of them are young men, and they are often very aggressive. So we want to keep them as far away from Hungary as possible.” So far the crackdown has worked. There were 50,707 border violations and 415 smugglers detained to the year ending in May 2023. This year there have been 1,273 border violators and 28 smugglers detained. Lord Sacks, Britain’s former Chief Rabbi, once said that 'the hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews'. For some the 7 October massacre triggered a surge not in solidarity with Jews, but anti-Semitism. Nine months later, most weekends, pro-Palestine demonstrators take control of swathes of space across British cities, intimidating passersby and Jewish counter-demonstrators. The police watch benignly. The British state has proved unwilling and unable to act decisively to secure the streets. Yet this is an issue for everyone, whatever their faith. When members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist Islamist group, called for “Jihad” after 7 October, the Metropolitan police issued a tweet, explaining that 'jihad has a number of meanings'. Which is technically true, but it seems unlikely that the activists were demanding a more fervent struggle for greater self-knowledge and moral improvement. Even as Hamas terrorists were still rampaging through Israel, pro-Palestinian activists in Neukölln, Berlin, handed out sweets to passersby to celebrate the slaughter. In Malmö in May, around 12,000 people took to the streets to protest Israel’s entry in the Eurovision final. Around 20 per cent of Malmö’s population are Muslim. The city, like Stockholm and other major conurbations, is riven by gang violence. Anti-semitism is surging. Sweden, a once peaceful, prosperous country, now has the second highest gun crime rate per capita in Europe after lawless Albania - and 30 times higher per capita than London. None of this is happening in central Europe. This year marks the eightieth anniversary of the Hungarian Holocaust. Budapest, like Prague and Warsaw, is still haunted by its lost Jewish population. Ironically, central Europe, the graveyard of so many Jews, is now one of the safest places in the world to be Jewish. In Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic there is widespread solidarity with Jews and Israel. Jewish people freely wear stars of David or signal their support for the Jewish state. Posters of the hostages abducted by Hamas remain untouched. There are no demonstrations in Budapest calling for the destruction of Israel as such protests are illegal. The ongoing migration crisis has forged an unlikely alliance: between Viktor Orbán and Donald Tusk, his Polish counterpart. Orbán is a 'populist' conservative eurosceptic, firmly on the right. Tusk is a liberal centrist, usually described as pro-EU. Not any more. In May this year EU member states finally approved the migration pact. Countries can either accept their quota or pay €20,000 a year for each migrant they refuse. Soon after, the European Court of Justice fined Hungary €200m for refusing to make changes in its border asylum policy, with a daily fine of €1m until it agrees to, causing fury in Budapest. Tusk, like Orbán, has been vocal in his opposition to the idea of quotas. Like Orbán, he argues that unrestricted mass migration poses an existential threat to Europe. “This is a question of the survival of our Western civilisation,” he said in February. Poland must “wake up and understand that we have to protect our territory, our borders, that if we are open to all forms of migration without any control, our world will collapse”. His declaration was greeted with a wry smile in Budapest. I lived in Budapest for about 25 years, covering Hungary and central Europe. I see now how something still thrives there that has almost vanished in Britain: a powerful sense of national and social cohesion. Hungarians, like Poles and Czechs, know who they are. They have a determined grasp of their history and culture. They know their national icons, their composers, artists and poets. They take a deep pride in them. There is no elite-led cultural onslaught on history and identity. National holidays prompt celebration rather than breast-beating. The contrast with Britain is sharp. A poll carried out in June for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission showed that only 48 per cent of 18-34 year olds even knew what D-Day was. Today there is no sign that Keleti was once the epicentre of Europe’s migrant crisis. The underpasses that were once home to legions of Afghans, Syrians and others are spotless, the station forecourt litter free. Around three miles away, on Freedom Square, stands one of the continent’s most poignant Holocaust memorials. It’s a decade-old ad hoc gathering of stories, photographs of victims, memories and documents in flimsy plastic folders, interspersed with personal possessions. Such a construct in a western European city would last a very short time before being daubed in paint or destroyed. In April the Holocaust memorial in Hyde Park had to be covered in blue plastic sheeting to prevent it being vandalised during a pro-Palestinian demonstration. The memorial on Freedom Square remains unguarded and untouched, as has it been for years, the fading testimonies gently rippling in the summer breeze. (Source: thecritic *)
* The Critic, a monthly British political and cultural magazine, based in London
Based on the writing of Mr LeBor
France
(Monday) July 8, 2024 4:01 AM CET Voters in France have once again mobilized to stop Le Pen’s 'far right' taking power. But it was a close-run thing for the anti-Le Pen movement, and this time it was a case of winning ugly. The election delivered a chaotic result, with no party taking enough seats for a majority in parliament, plunging French politics into turmoil that could last months. Macron called the snap election in June in an effort to stop Le Pen’s surging 'far-right' National Rally in its tracks. But her party enhanced its profile and won 50 more seats than in 2022, while the president’s own liberal coalition fell back. Even though the leftist alliance and Macron’s liberals agreed to collaborate and vote tactically to stop Le Pen’s National Rally from winning, a deeper coalition between the two groups to govern France appears unlikely. Veteran 'far-left' firebrand Mélenchon’s France Unbowed, one of the parties within the left-wing alliance, has ruled out governing with the president’s liberals. Likewise Macron’s Prime Minster, Gabriel Attal, has said his side would never share power with Mélenchon. Yesterday evening, Attal opened the door to leading a caretaker government to provide some stability during the Olympic Games later this month. The 'far right' is now stronger and the liberals weaker, ahead of a wide-open presidential race in 2027. Before the snap election, the president commanded the largest group in parliament. Now he will likely have to work with an opposition politician as prime minister. His authority at home and credibility abroad have been damaged. The veteran left-wing radical Mélenchon who won the race to get his message out, leaping on stage at his party’s rally to demand Macron appoint a leftist prime minister and bring his movement into power. The three-times presidential candidate has indicated he wouldn’t mind becoming France’s prime minister himself. That’s not going to happen. The firebrand is toxic to many frontline politicians, with his fascination for Latin American strongmen, his temper tantrums and his vicious attacks on opponents. Most recently, critics accused him of flirting with antisemitism when he appeared to downplay attacks against Jews in France. The French voted massively, the centre was defeated, and if it ends with Attal staying on as prime minister, it’s not a good thing for France’s democracy. (Source: politico *)
* Politico, an American political digital newspaper. Headquarters Arlington County, Virginia, U.S.
(Monday), 08/07/2024 - 01:22 Le Pen and Bardella attributed their party's setback on Sunday to what Bardella called the "disgraceful alliance" the anti-RN forces, who he said had caricatured the party and disrespected its voters. Bardella and Le Pen strove to put a brave face on their result. The party had increased its share of seats in the National Assembly to a record high, they noted, vowing to keep fighting until they won power. "The tide is rising, but it didn't rise quite high enough this time," said Le Pen, who is likely to mount her fourth presidential campaign in 2027. "Our victory has merely been delayed." (Source: france24 / Reuters *)
* Reuters, News agency. Headquarters London, England
(Monday), 08/07/2024 - 00:32 Macron dissolved parliament and called for snap legislative elections after the 'far right' came out ahead of his centrist alliance in June elections for the European Parliament. Leftist parties – including the 'hard-left' France Unbowed, the Communists, the centre-left Socialists and the Greens – hastily agreed to form an alliance called the New Popular Front in the days after Macron’s shock decision. Le Pen's 'far-right' National Rally party led the first round of voting with 33% followed by the New Popular Front with almost 28% and President Macron's ruling coalition trailing at 20%. Between the first and second rounds, more than 200 candidates from various parties who qualified for the run-off stepped aside to allow a better-placed rival to go head-to-head with the National Rally candidate in their constituencies, increasing the chances of defeating them. 'Leftist' alliance was trouncing Macron's ruling party. France's snap legislative elections yesterday showed the leftist New Popular Front leading both Macron's ruling party and the right-wing National Rally but falling short of an absolute majority, according to Ipsos Talan projections. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said he would resign today but will carry out his duties as long as required. It is France's president who nominates the PM but the candidate must be approved by parliament and thus often hails from whatever party or coalition holds the most seats. One of the coalition's leaders, Mélenchon of the 'far-left' France Unbowed party, urged Macron to invite them to form a government, saying the alliance “is ready to govern". (Source: france24 *)
* France 24, French international news television network based in Paris, owned by the French government.
Russia
(Monday), 7/8/2024 12:00 Russian missiles smashed down in Kyiv, Dnipro and other Ukrainian cities on today, killing at least 31 people, including two at a children’s hospital in Kyiv. The Russian Defense Ministry, posting on Telegram, confirmed that it had carried out a major missile attack on Ukraine today but insisted that the targets were “Ukrainian military industry facilities” and “air bases.” (Source: msn / The Washington Post)
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