NEW YORK-PARIS (EJP)---Jewish groups expressed deep concern that one in six Hungarian voters cast their ballots for an openly anti-Semitic party last Sunday, calling the strong showing of the Jobbik party, "a vote for hate."

Mainstream voters who opposed the current Socialist government had the option of supporting the center-right Fidesz party, which won 53% of the vote. A significant portion of the electorate, however, cast their ballots for an openly anti-Semitic and racist party, Jobbik, which won 16.6 percent of the vote.

"A vote for Jobbik was a vote for hate," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

"The Jobbik party’s appeals to racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism clearly have their antecedents in modern European history, and no one wants to see that history repeated in Hungary," he said.

The European Jewish Congress (EJC) said Jobbik’s successes "prove that acceptable anti-Semitism, xenophobia and racism are still alive and well in parts of Europe."

It said that in reaction to these results, there needs to be a major offensive against hate in Europe.

EJC President Moshe Kantor said that the Jobbik successes were symptomatic of a new wave of far-right parties that are gaining in popularity in Europe. "The recent European elections proved that the far-right is a force in Europe and now they are bolstering those results with national election successes."

Hungary’s incoming Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, vowed on Monday to defend the country from the ascent of the extreme-right party.

Orban, 46, the leader of Fidezs, the party that defeated the Socialists in the first-round parliamentary elections on Sunday, said he was deeply unhappy over the rise of  Jobbik, which won 16.7 percent of the vote. It was the best performance by a far-right party in Hungary since the fall of Communism in 1989.

"No radical party will be allowed to get rid of law and order in this country," he told journalists. "Democracy in this country is strong enough to defend itself."

One of Jobbik’s most prominent members, Krisztina Morvai, now a member of the European Parliament, lambasted Israel’s offensive in Gaza in an open letter to the Israeli ambassador in Hungary last year. “I wish all of you lice-infested, dirty murderers will receive Hamas’s ‘kisses,”’ it said.