Foreign Minister Yair Lapid spoke on the phone yesterday (Monday) with Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Sigerto. This is the first conversation between Lapid and his Hungarian counterpart. In recent years, Lapid has been the loudest critic of the close ties between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Victor Urban's government in Budapest.

The person who published the conversation was the Hungarian Foreign Minister in a post he posted on Facebook. He said that Lapid thanked him for Hungary's support for Israel at the UN and the European Union. The Hungarian minister added that he emphasized to Lapid that Hungary would continue to support Israel in international forums and oppose criticism of Israel.

The Hungarian minister invited Lapid to visit Budapest.

Since taking office as foreign minister, Lapid has stated several times that he intends to change Netanyahu's policy toward the European Union. Lapid made it clear that Israel would strengthen ties with liberal democracies in Western Europe and cool relations with the non-liberal governments of Hungary and Poland.

A few hours after his conversation with Lapid, the Hungarian foreign minister spoke at a political conference of a right-wing conservative organization in Bratislava, the capital of Slovenia, and attacked what he called the "liberal mainstream" in Europe and the world. "They preach to us morals on how to run a democracy and on freedom of expression but at the same time they are establishing a dictatorship of opinions," said Hungarian Foreign Minister