Gaza Strip Conflict: Hungarian Mayor Hangs Israel's Netanyahu and Peres in Mock Public Execution

To protest the war in Gaza, the extreme-right mayor of a Hungarian village held a mock public execution, in which the effigies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former President Shimon Peres were hanged.

Mayor Mihaly Zoltan Orosz chaired the gruesome ceremony in a square of Erpatak, a town of 1,800 people in eastern Hungary.

Online footage of the event shows Orosz dressed in a traditional local costume, as he stands in front of two black-clad dummies representing Netanyahu and Peres tied to a wooden gallows.

The mayor, who is an affiliate of the ultra-nationalist Jobbik party, is flanked by some youths standing in a military-like position of 'at attention' and an executioner sporting a face-covering black hood.

As he holds an Israeli-like flag where the Star of David has been replaced with the Freemason symbol, Orosz gives his constituents an anti-Israeli speech.

He then defaces the flag, stepping on it amid applause from onlookers.

Moments later, the executioner kicks the chairs out from under Netanyahu and Peres's puppets, sparking once again applause of approval.

Orosz, who has ruled over Erpatak since 2005, later explained that he opposes "the efforts of Freemason Jews to rule the world", adding that the "Jewish terror state" is "trying to obliterate the Palestinians."

The performance was condemned as "shocking" by Hungary's foreign ministry.

"The mayor has used the conflict in Gaza and its innocent victims as an excuse to spread hate-inducing propaganda," the ministry said in a statement.

The incident comes as Jewish communities across Europe have lamented a worrying rise in anti-Semitism fuelled by the bloodshed in Gaza.

Jobbik, which has a reputation as one of the most radical far-right parties in Europe, came third in Hungary's parliamentary elections in April with 21% of the vote backing its anti-immigration, anti-EU and nationalist agenda.

The party has also gained an anti-Semitic reputation in recent years due to a series of controversial statements made by its representatives.

In 2012, a senior lawmaker asked parliament for a list of people "of Jewish origin [who] present a national security risk to Hungary", while an MEP for the party once infamously ranted that "So-called proud Hungarian Jews should go back to playing with their tiny little circumcised tails."

Anti-Semitism is a delicate issue in Hungary, where between 500,000 and 600,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered during the Second World War, according to the Holocaust memorial centre in Budapest.