Anatomy of a crisis: How ties collapsed,
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with Israeli reporters in a closed-door meeting in Warsaw’s Museum of the History of Polish Jews, located on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. Reporters were not allowed to tape the briefing.
Netanyahu said that “Poles cooperated with the Nazis” to kill Jews during the Holocaust. Journalists mistakenly expanded on his comments, adding in the word “the” before “Poles” or erroneously paraphrased it – as The Jerusalem Post did – to include the Polish nation.
Poland is sensitive about culpability for Jewish deaths in the Holocaust and has a law prohibiting statements that hold the Polish nation responsible for the killing of Jews in World War II.
In the pre-dawn hours of Friday, before Netanyahu took off from Warsaw, the Prime Minister’s Office played reporters a section of its tape from the briefing to clarify Netanyahu’s comments. Media reports were adjusted accordingly. In Warsaw later that morning, the Polish Foreign Ministry summoned Israel’s ambassador to clarify the prime minister’s comments.
After Netanyahu landed in Israel , the office put out the following statement. “In a briefing, PM Netanyahu spoke of Poles and not the Polish people or the country of Poland. This was misquoted and misrepresented in press reports and was subsequently corrected by the journalist who issued the initial misstatement.”
Israel was set to become the first country to host the Visegrad Group for a summit. This is a group of four Eastern European countries – Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – known as the V4. The prime ministers from all four countries were scheduled to arrive Tuesday for Wednesday’s meeting. The Israeli-Polish crisis appeared to be resolved.
Poland said its prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, spoke with Netanyahu and told him he would not attend the V4, and would instead send Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz. A diplomatic official in Jerusalem hinted that Morawiecki was likely playing to his voter base by explaining that there was a Polish election in the fall.
On only his second day on the job, new acting foreign minister Israel Katz, angered Poland and created a full blown crisis. He spoke with i24 News channel about the issue and quoted former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, who had once stated: “the Poles imbibe antisemitism from their mothers’ milk.” Katz added, “No one will tell us how to remember the fallen.”
Poland demanded an apology. The Polish Foreign Ministry tweeted that Katz’s remarks “are not only insulting, but also stir up negative emotions between our nations and contribute to increasing anti-Polonism and anti-Semitism. We expect an adequate reaction from the Israeli side.”
When none was forthcoming, Morawiecki canceled Poland’s participation in the summit altogether.