All the “Cummings” and goings involving newly-wedded philanderer Boris Johnson over the last few days have provided a handy distraction from the fact that, last Friday, Britain’s Prime Minister saw fit to welcome Victor Orban, Europe’s most Islamophobic and anti-migrant Prime Minister, to a cosy chat at No 10.

Orban calls his country the “last bastion’ against “the Islamisation of Europe”. He describes migrants as “poison” and Hungary’s longstanding but marginalised Roma communities, as “aggressors against the majority”. He used vile antisemitic conspiracy propaganda against the Hungarian Jew George Soros, in his last election campaign in 2018, utilising the far-right “Great Replacement” theory.

The “softer” version of this theory is the claim that Muslim migration to the West undermines Western Christian civilisation and values. Orban likes to go one step further, fingering a pro-migrant Jewish financier as responsible for organising this replacement. Traditional antisemitic stereotypes about Jews and money are woven through Orban’s description of Soros as “a speculator who operates a mafia network. Migration is good business for him”. Soros, “and his army”, says Orban, “don’t like Christian Europe. They don’t like Christians at all.”

Soros’ grinning face featured on billboards all over Hungary in that election campaign, with the caption “Don’t let Soros have the last laugh.” Orban told a mass election rally of his battle against “…an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not national but international, does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world.”

Who else are soldiers in Soros’ army? Feminists, actually. Orban blames them for low birth-rates among native Hungarian women. He laments that Europe has fewer and fewer children, and condemns Western nations who look to migration “…so that the numbers will add up. We Hungarians have a different way of thinking. Instead of just numbers, we want Hungarian children. Migration for us is surrender.” In Orban’s Hungary, native women can access free IVF treatment if they are heterosexual and under 40.

You might have expected that some of the leading Jewish community organisations, such as the Board of Deputies (BoD) and the Community Security Trust (CST), who are not usually coy when it comes to exposing and challenging antisemitism, might have had something to say about Johnson’s welcome for a man who has also been busily rehabilitating the reputation of Hitler’s Hungarian collaborator, Admiral Horthy. Or indeed, when that someone has removed the work of Hungary’s sole Nobel Laureate for Literature, Imre Kertesz, a Jewish Auschwitz survivor from the compulsory education curriculum, but inserted the works of pro-Nazi, antisemitic writers.

Even more so, you might have expected an intervention from such Jewish organisations, after the deep embarrassment both bodies endured the weekend before last, when the Far Right guru, EDL leader, and former BNP member, Tommy Robinson, turned up with a few of his mates at the “Solidarity with Israel” demonstration outside the Israeli Embassy. This event was organised by the Zionist Federation with the President of the Board of Deputies a prominent guest speaker, and the CST running the security. Videos from the event showed how some among the crowd queued up for selfies with Robinson, while others welcomed him warmly with hugs and handshakes.

You might think that these bodies would seek to polish their tarnished reputation with a strong denunciation of Orban’s visit and condemnation of Johnson, but it’s a little awkward. You see, Orban has perfected the art of being antisemitic (alongside his other bigotries) while being full of praise for the Israeli Government. And the BoD can hardly claim to be unaware of Johnson’s record when it comes to minorities, his horrific stereotyping of Africans and his deeply racist comments about Muslims, not to mention his 2005 novel that was replete with antisemitic stereotypes.

And no, as you are asking, they never do mention that 2005 novel. But Johnson too is full of love for the government of Israel led (for now, but maybe not for much longer) by Benjamain Netanyahu. Whether it was Johnson’s love of Israel or the BoD’s irrational and obsessive hatred of Jeremy Corbyn that led them into this mire, we may never know. And I don’t really care. But they have remained shamefully silent on Orban’s meeting with Johnson.

Not a peep either from Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, a supporter of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories, who had (ab)used the authority of his (unelected) office shortly before the 2019 General Election to denounce Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour, thereby aiding the racist, Boris Johnson’s victory. Rabbi Mirvis claimed at the time that it was his “moral duty” to denounce Corbyn. His silence over the Johnson-Orban meeting speaks volumes. His moral compass seems to have disappeared where the sun doesn’t shine.

And while it may be true that no one chooses their family, is it just a coincidence that Netanyahu’s son, Yair, is a great fan of both Tommy Robinson and Orban?

Meanwhile the anti-Zionist Jewish Socialists’ Group stood shoulder to shoulder with Muslim, Roma, Hungarian and other anti-racist activists outside Downing Street, protesting against the meeting. They had nothing to be coy or embarrassed about.

Neither did one of the speakers at the rally, another left-wing Jew, also an anti-Zionist, who described how, on the same day as the Orban-Johnson meeting – May 28 – but in 1944, 963 Jews were transferred from Auschwitz to Mauthausen concentration camp for medical experimentation. It was the height of the Nazi Holocaust. They were rounded up by the Hungarian state, by Hungarian police, Hungarian civil servants and Hungarian officials. 95% of provincial Jewry (in Hungary) perished. One in two Jews in Budapest, members of this speaker’s family among them. All under the Horthy regime that Orban continues to praise as that of an “exceptional statesman.”