Daily Sabah (Turkey)

Netanyahu’s Nazi remark prompts Poland to nix Israel summit

-

Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s off-hand comment about Poland and the Holocaust has overshadow­ed a summit of Central European leaders this week in Israel after Poland pulled out of the gathering in protest yesterday.

The Visegrad Group of four central European countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – yesterday canceled their meeting in Israel after the Polish Prime Minister pulled out of a planned trip to Jerusalem in protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments about Poles and the Holocaust.

The leaders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary would instead hold bilateral meetings with Israeli leaders later this week, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry said. Czech

PRIME

Prime Minister Andrej Babis reportedly stated that the summit may be reschedule­d for the second half of this year.

Poland’s Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, announced Sunday that he would be skipping this week’s Visegrad summit, a gathering with fellow prime ministers from Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowic­z was supposed to replace him at today’s meeting in Jerusalem, the first time the gathering is being held outside of Europe. But after Israel’s acting foreign minister reiterated the collaborat­ion claims, Morawiecki canceled Poland’s participat­ion altogether, denouncing the comments as “racist.” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz told Israeli television Sunday that Poles had “collaborat­ed with the Nazis” and “sucked anti-Semitism from their mothers’ milk.”

Warsaw has long been at pains to state that Poland, which was occupied by Nazi Germany, could not have and did not collaborat­e in the Holocaust although individual Poles gave up Jews to the Nazis. The Israeli prime minister’s office said Friday that Netanyahu had not implicated all Poles in the Holocaust. It insisted that Netanyahu was “misquoted” in Haaretz and other publicatio­ns that reported different versions of the quote. The clarificat­ion came hours after the Polish foreign ministry had summoned Israeli ambassador Anna Azari over the remarks, the second time Warsaw has taken such action in a matter of days.

The crisis was sparked last week when Netanyahu told reporters during Munich Security Conference in Warsaw that “Poles cooperated with the Nazis.” The seemingly innocuous comment infuriated his Polish hosts, who reject suggestion­s that their country collaborat­ed with Hitler. The Warsaw summit on the Middle East was co-hosted by Poland and the U.S., which focused on isolating Iran while building ArabIsrael­i ties.

The summit has also reflected particular­ly the role of Central Europe played in the American foreign policy under President Donald Trump administra­tion. The recent developmen­ts showed that the four Visegrad Group countries hope to strengthen their ties with Washington while the U.S., bypassing the Paris-Berlin axis, seeks greater influence in the region on issues where the key European powers strongly oppose Trump’s policies.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Türkiye