Poland quits Israel summit after revival of ‘racist ’attack

Jerusalem meeting in disarray after allegations over anti-semitism and role in Holocaust

A SUMMIT of European states has collapsed after Israeli comments alleging Polish participation in the Holocaust.

Arguments between Israel, the host nation, and Poland escalated on Friday, when Israeli media reported remarks by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, suggesting Polish complicity in the Holocaust.

Yesterday Yisrael Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, resurrected an old quote from Yitzhak Shamir, the former Israeli prime minister and Holocaust survivor, by saying: “Poles suckle antisemitism from their mother’s milk.”

In response, Warsaw pulled out of the meeting, which was due to take place today between the four Visegrad countries – Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary – marking a new low in relations with Israel.

Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish prime minister, called the remarks “racist and unacceptable”.

“Not only don’t we accept such racist comments, but with all our strength we want to stress that we will fight for historical truth, for the honour of Poles,” he told reporters.

He said Poland was a victim of the Second World War and that many Poles had risked everything to help Jews fleeing the Nazis.

The Israeli ambassador to Warsaw was summoned for a brief meeting at the Polish foreign ministry yesterday, while the Polish ambassador to Israel tweeted that the foreign minister’s remarks were “shameful, racist and utterly acceptable.”

Jewish leaders in Poland issued a statement saying Mr Shamir’s words were “already unjust when they were first said, in 1989, when Polish-israeli relations were being rebuilt, after the long night of communism.”

Although the Polish government accepted an explanation by Mr Netanyahu’s office that he had been “misquoted and misrepresented”, and that he was only referring to individual Poles rather than the Polish nation, his comments touched a nerve in Warsaw.

While accepting that some Poles betrayed and murdered Jews during the war, the Polish government considers any insinuation that the Polish state was involved in the Holocaust, or that Poles were anti-semitic, to be unjust and unfounded.

Last year the government introduced a controversial “Holocaust law” criminalising the act of blaming the Polish state for crimes committed against Jews by the Nazis. The law prompted a spat with Israel amid claims that Warsaw was trying to whitewash elements of its wartime history.

Israel’s foreign ministry said the leaders of the other Visegrad countries would still come to Israel to hold bilateral talks with Mr Netanyahu.

The Polish decision is a blow for Mr Netanyahu, who had hoped that the summit would burnish his diplomatic credentials ahead of Israel’s April election. He sees the Visegrad-4 as a counterbalance to Western European countries, which tend to be more critical of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians.

Mr Netanyahu has himself been criticised in Israel over what some see as a bid to win allies in central Europe at the expense of revising Holocaust history and whitewashing anti-semitism.

‘With all our strength we will fight for historical truth, for the honour of Poles’