Polish PM: There were Polish perpetrators of the Holocaust just like there were Jewish ones
Outraged Netanyahu to speak to Morawiecki as MKs call to downgrade ties with Warsaw
In comments that outraged Israelis across the political spectrum, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Saturday that there were Polish perpetrators in the Holocaust, in the same way that there were also Jewish, Ukrainian and Russian perpetrators.
Morawiecki was responding to a question posed to him at the Munich Security Conference by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, on the heels of the contentious law that criminalizes talk of Polish complicity in Nazi crimes.
Bergman related how his mother saved herself and much of her family during the Holocaust after she overheard her Polish neighbors saying that they planned to reveal the location of their Jewish neighbors to the SS.
“If I understand correctly, after this law is legislated, I will be considered a criminal in your country for saying this,” Bergman said. He told the prime minister that he was “drawing more fire” to the subject of Polish complicity, drawing applause from the audience.
Morawiecki responded that Poland will not punish people who say there were Polish perpetrators, “as there were Jewish perpetrators, as there were Russian perpetrators, as there were Ukrainian perpetrators – not only German perpetrators.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Morawiecki’s remarks as “outrageous.”
“There is a problem here of a misunderstanding of history and a lack of sensitivity to the tragedy of our people. I plan to talk to him soon,” said Netanyahu, who was also in Munich.
Netanyahu’s comments, which were made on Saturday night, followed several calls from members of the opposition for the prime minister to downgrade Israel’s ties with Poland.
Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid called on Netanyahu to immediately recall Israel’s ambassador from Warsaw.
“The Polish prime minister’s statement is antisemitism of the oldest kind. The perpetrators are not the victims. The Jewish state will not allow the murdered to be blamed for their own murder. I again call upon the prime minister to immediately recall our ambassador,” Lapid wrote on Twitter.
Zionist Union chairman Avi Gabbay accused the Polish prime minister of speaking like a Holocaust denier: “The blood of millions of Jews cries out from Polish soil about the distortion of history and the escape from guilt. Jews were murdered in the Holocaust and Poles took an active part in their murder. The government of Israel must be the voice of the millions of those murdered and strongly condemn the words of the Polish prime minister.”
Many other members of his party also decried Morawiecki’s statement. MK NACHMAN SHAI (Zionist Union) was among the voices calling on the government to downgrade the level of diplomatic relations with Warsaw.
“The time has come for the government of Israel to take practical steps and make it clear to Poland that the law and repeated statements about the Poles and the Holocaust of European Jewry are on the border of Holocaust denial,” he said.
“It must demand a change
main cause of the region’s instability, but have become increasingly vocal against Iran in recent months, indicating a willingness to sanction it for nonnuclear behavior so long as the 2015 deal is preserved.
On another multilateral front, Trump’s ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, said last week that a report from the UN’s Panel of Experts on Yemen proves that Iran’s introduction of ballistic missiles there is a “violation of international norms” and Security Council sanctions, demanding action.
“This report highlights what we’ve been saying for months: Iran has been illegally transferring weapons in violation of multiple Security Council resolutions,” Haley said. “The United States will continue to call out Iran’s dangerous actions, but the world cannot continue to allow these blatant violations to go unanswered. Iran needs to know that there are consequences for defying the international community. It’s time for the Security Council to act.”
Trita Parsi, founder and president of the National Iranian American Council, predicted new US moves at the UN this week and suggested they might be an indirect response to a recent aerial confrontation across Israel’s northern border.
“The appetite for war is low on both sides, which could make a different scenario more likely,” said Parsi, referring to the political moods in Israel and Iran. A drone understood to be of Iranian origin flew into Israeli airspace from Syria last week, prompting the IAF to shoot it down and retaliate against Iranian assets in Syria. Israel lost a jet in the process.
“Instead of a showdown in Syria, the showdown will move to New York and feed into an ongoing effort by Saudi Arabia and the Trump administration to use any pretext – missiles, drones or violating the ‘spirit’ of the Iran deal – to pass a Chapter VII UN [Security Council] resolution,” said Parsi, who supports the 2015 nuclear deal.
Last fall, Trump announced a comprehensive strategy to “counter” Iran, which he said would include new transnational sanctions and a fundamental reevaluation of the nuclear deal. Last month, the Trump administration targeted Hezbollah and Hamas individuals and entities with new sanctions, which it characterized as a part of its Iran strategy.
“We will no longer allow corrupt Hezbollah and other Iranian regime cronies to hide their crimes behind front companies,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote on Twitter at the UJNF i.PSF UP DPNF u