Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday denounced the EU's political demands on Israel as "absolutely crazy", in remarks leaked from a closed-door meeting with eastern and central European leaders in Budapest.

Netanyahu met the Visegrad Four leaders of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, who backed Israel and called for an improvement in the EU's relations with the state.

"The European Union is the only association of countries in the world that conditions the relations with Israel... in every area on political conditions," he said in a recording heard by AFP.

"It's crazy, it's absolutely crazy," he added.

Netanyahu cited China, Russia and India as countries who do business with "innovation giant Israel" and "don't care about political issues."

Brussels has repeatedly condemned Israel's building of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and its crackdown on civil society groups critical of the government.

"Europe has to decide whether it wants to live and thrive or if it wants to shrivel and disappear," he told the four prime ministers.

"Don't undermine that one Western country that defends European values and European interests and prevents another mass migration to Europe."

Support in Brussels

Netanyahu asked the four premiers point blank to support his country in Brussels.

"If you, as the Visegrad group, can begin to advance this conception, I think this would be... beneficial to you but I think it would actually be beneficial to all of Europe."

"We're part of European civilisation. You look at the Middle East - Europe stops in Israel. That's it."

At a later press briefing Netanyahu repeated the statements in a more diplomatic language, saying Israel "serves a unique function in being the one Western country in the region, the one country that is able to limit and fight from within the region this great danger to all of us."Addressing Prime Minister Orban and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a ceremonial hall near the main synagogue in Budapest, Andras Heisler, chairman of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Federations (Mazsihisz), said it was unacceptable that the campaign triggered fear among Jews.

"Today, in Hungary an all-out propaganda campaign could be started with visual and lingustic tools that triggered bad feelings among us Jews," Heisler said. His mother, 92, who survived the Holocaust, was in the audience.

"There can be a debate about the government's intentions, but the reason why it became unacceptable to me was that Jews in Hungary have started to fear ... "

"We're often criticised by Europe, (more often) than any other place in the world... It's time to have a reassessment in Europe about the relations with Israel."

Hungary's Orban, himself often accused in Brussels of flouting liberal democratic values such as press freedom, said he and other Visegrad leaders would support better relations between the EU and Israel.

The group will meet in 2018 in Jerusalem at Netanyahu's invitation.

"The Visegrad Four shares the Israeli view that external border defence is key," Orban told a press briefing. "Free movement of people without controls raises the risk of terror."

Orban has been criticised in the EU for erecting a razor wire border fence and refusing to accept migrants under EU agreements, preferring "ethnic homogeneity".

But he backed down from a recent rhetorical overture toward far-right groups amid accusations of anti-Semitism.

"The EU should appreciate the efforts Israel makes for the (Middle East) region's stability, which serve Europe as it spares us from newer and newer waves of migration," he said.

The recent closeness of Netanyahu with leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been viewed with suspicion in the European Union.

The comments were the latest example of divergence between west and east Europe, where questions of national sovereignty, migration and civic freedoms have also stirred friction. US President Donald Trump lent support this month to Poland, target of criticism by the EU he has disdained, with a visit to Warsaw.

Hungarian Jews 'disappointed'

Talks between Orban an Netanyahu come as Hungarian Jews on Wednesday sharply criticised Viktor Orban's billboard campaign using the image of US financier George Soros and said the Israeli government's backing of it came as a disappointment to the local Jewish community.

In the campaign, Soros is singled out as an enemy of Hungary. "Let's not allow Soros to have the last laugh" say billboards next to a picture of the 86-year-old Jewish investor, a campaign that Jewish groups say foments anti-Semitism.

Many posters have been defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti.

Addressing Prime Minister Orban and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a ceremonial hall near the main synagogue in Budapest, Andras Heisler, chairman of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Federations (Mazsihisz), said it was unacceptable that the campaign triggered fear among Jews.

"Today, in Hungary an all-out propaganda campaign could be started with visual and lingustic tools that triggered bad feelings among us Jews," Heisler said. His mother, 92, who survived the Holocaust, was in the audience.

"There can be a debate about the government's intentions, but the reason why it became unacceptable to me was that Jews in Hungary have started to fear ... "

Orban told Netanyahu that his country stood firmly against anti-Semitism after the "crime" of failing to protect its Jewish citizens during World War Two.