Poland awaiting Israel’s apology
WARSAW, Poland — A Polish government official said on Tuesday that Warsaw is still waiting for Israel’s government to apologize for comments the acting foreign minister made about Poles and their role in the Holocaust.
Deputy Foreign Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sek said the “shameful, scandalous and slanderous” comments by the Israeli minister, Israel Katz, require an “unequivocal and definite” reaction.
Szynkowski vel Sek said it was up to Israel to choose the form the apology takes and how it is delivered. He said more education is needed about what happened during World War II on Polish soil.
Katz said on Sunday, his first as Israel’s acting foreign minister, that Poles collaborated with Nazi Germans during the war and “sucked anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk”.
The “mothers’ milk” remark repeated a 1989 comment by Israel’s then-prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, which drew condemnation at the time as well.
In response to Katz, Poland pulled out of a summit of central European nations in Jerusalem scheduled for this week.
The US ambassador to Poland, Georgette Mosbacher, wrote on her Polish-language Twitter account that Katz’s comments were “offensive” and out of place between such “close allies as Poland and Israel”.
Dueling narratives about the Holocaust have been a source of tension between Israel and Poland, which otherwise have strong relations. Poland lost 6 million citizens during World War II, half of them Jews.
The summit was canceled while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instead hosted a series of sit-downs on Tuesday with his Czech, Slovakian and Hungarian counterparts.
Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto said on Tuesday that Hungarian government will open a foreign trade representation in Jerusalem, which will be another step forward in strengthening Hungarian-Israeli relations.
“Hungary and Israel are close allies in terms of security and economic cooperation, and they are cooperating within international organizations,” he was quoted as saying by the official Hungarian government website.
Szijjarto also met with Israeli officials to discuss security and economic cooperation on Tuesday.
The minister said that Hungary’s stance, which it “expressed frequently and unequivocally”, was that international organizations often took a “downright unfair and biased approach toward Israel”, adding that Hungary always stood by a balanced and fair approach to the country.
Referring to the Middle East peace process, the minister said that “economic and trade restrictions should not be mixed up with the creation of peace”. The minister said Hungary rejected bans and blockades of products from Israeli settlements, arguing that “such an approach wouldn’t lead anywhere”.
The minister also said that Israel and Hungary had “fought side by side” against the United Nations’ global migration compact. He said this was an important achievement from a security standpoint.
Just like the United States and Israel, Hungary quit the UN migration pact in 2018. “This document goes entirely against Hungary’s security interests,” the Hungarian government argued.
Regarding economic cooperation, Szijjarto noted that bilateral trade exceeded $500 million in 2018 and that cooperation was thriving in the field of innovative automotive industry products.