Ambassadors rarely issue public statements condemning their host country. When they do, it's usually after consulting with the top echelons of their foreign ministries, and receiving their blessing. In even rarer cases does a foreign minister instruct his ministry's spokesman to publicly back away from his ambassador's comments. Israel's ambassador in Budapest, Yossi Amrani, was at the center of such a singularly embarrassing experience when he demanded that Hungarian authorities put an end to a political campaign bearing anti-Semitic overtones.

With Israel's foreign minister instructing the ministry's spokesman to back away from Amrani's declaration, Israel's diplomatic envoys around the world learned that from now on they must be careful with what they say in condemning anti-Semitism. From now on, they must understand that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also holds the position of foreign minister, reserves accusations of anti-Semitism for attacks against foreign politicians and left-wing activists who dare to oppose the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and act against Israeli settlements on those lands.

It all started June 21, following a speech by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to his ruling Fidesz party. Orban singled out for praise the contributions of "several extraordinary politicians, such as Miklos Horthy" to his country's reconstruction after World War I. Not a single word about Horthy's role in the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry during World War II. The Jewish community in Hungary and the World Jewish Congress were quick to denounce Orban. A statement issued by the Holocaust Museum in Washington said the praise Orban had lavished on Horthy as a statesman was an attempt to erase the role of the Hungarian regime in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust, and an insult to the memory of the victims.

Amrani's language was more measured. He simply called Orban's comments "worrying" and warned against any attempt to conceal the cooperation of the Horthy regime with the Nazis, the race laws that were passed under his tutelage and the Holocaust of Hungarian Jews. Orban did not retract his remarks. In a press statement he issued after a conversation with Amrani, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said he had told the Israeli diplomat that "Horthy's regime had positive periods, but also extremely negative ones." Szijjarto asked that "historical facts that clearly point to this be respected." As far as he's concerned, cooperation with the murder of half a million Jews was "a negative period" of equal value to Horthy's "positive periods."