Israel finds that the Holocaust is becoming inconvenient when it comes to friendship with far-Right regimes

Netanyahu invites Viktor Orban, Hungary’s racist anti-Semitic Prime Minister for a state visit.

It is no surprise that nearly 3 years after his speech to the World Zionist Congress, when Netanyahu tried to blame the Palestinians for the Holocaust, that he has now gone one step further and exonerated the anti-Semitic leaders of the Polish and Hungarian regimes.  According to Netanyahu it wasn’t Hitler who thought up the idea of exterminating the Jews it was the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj al Amin Husseini. In his speech Netanyahu explained

“Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said: ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here [to Palestine].’” According to Netanyahu, Hitler then asked: “What should I do with them?” and the mufti replied: “Burn them.”

You can read about this in my article Rewriting the Holocaust.

Earlier this year Poland’s Senate passed a Holocaust law making it a criminal offence to blame Poland for any crimes committed during the Holocaust.  The bill was proposed by the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) and called for up to three years in prison.   “We have to send a clear signal to the world that we won’t allow for Poland to continue being insulted,” Patryk Jaki, a deputy justice minister, told reporters in parliament.

The legislation criminalised any mention of Poles “being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich.” The harshest penalties were reserved for those who referred to Nazi-era concentration camps such as Auschwitz as “Polish death camps.” Only scientific research into the war and artistic work was exempted. To be fair though it is highly inaccurate to describe the Nazi extermination camps as being Polish.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama caused an uproar in Poland when he used the phrase “Polish death camp” while posthumously bestowing a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 on Jan Karski, a Polish World War II resistance fighter. Obama apologized for using the phrase after being denounced by current European Council President Donald Tusk, who was then the Prime Minister of Poland.

PiS is a virulently racist and xenophobic party. Its Defence Minister, Antoni Macierewicz told listeners to the anti-Semitic Catholic radio station, Radio Maryja in 2002 that he had read Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous Czarist forgery, termed a ‘Warrant for Genocide’ a pamphlet that purports to be a Jewish plan to control the world but which has been exposed as a hoax. Whilst acknowledging there was debate about the pamphlet’s authenticity, he told listeners that: “Experience shows that there are such groups in Jewish circles.” Polish defence minister condemned over Jewish conspiracy theory

PiS’s leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski once said Muslim refugees carried “various parasites and protozoa” and the government’s education minister in 2016 discounted two well-documented massacres of Jews, including Jedwabne, by calling it a matter of “opinion ”. Jedwabne was a village in Eastern Poland where up to 1600 Jews were burnt alive after being herded into a barn by fellow Polish villagers. See Jedwabne – The Polish Village Where Up to 900 Jews Were Burnt Alive by Fellow Poles

There has been a resurgence of far-right sentiment in the country. A Polish government pollster found in a survey that more than one in three polled said they supported far-right activities. That same month, far-right nationalists marched in Warsaw, brandishing slogans and signs that said “Clean Blood,” “White Europe, and “Europe Will Be White.” Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said the march was fueled by “patriotic behavior of Poles” and displays of xenophobia were “incidents” that were “of course, reprehensible.” See Poland Just Passed a Holocaust Bill That Is Causing Outrage. Here's What You Need to Know

Not only has Netanyahu done a deal with the far-Right Polish government that removes prison sentences for mentioning Polish complicity in the Holocaust but he has also invited to Israel the anti-Semitic far-Right Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban from July 18^th-20^th.

This is the same Orban who waged an anti-Semitic campaign against George Soros and who has praised Hungary’s pro-Nazi ruler, Admiral Horthy as an ‘exceptional statesman’.  Given that Horthy presided over the unprecedented rapid deportation of nearly ½ million Jews to Auschwitz between May 15^th and July 7^th 1944 he probably was exceptional.

To those who maintain that opposing Israel is somehow ‘anti-Semitic’ the proof that this is an egregious lie is the support that the Israeli government gives to far-Right and anti-Semitic governments in Europe.  Indeed today, the best friends of Israel are to be found amongst fascists, neo-Nazis and assorted anti-Semites.  This should be our response to allegations that criticism of Israel is ‘anti-Semitic’/

This is from Jews Against Genocide:

 Stop the Lies

Israeli citizens file a freedom of information request regarding the shameful joint Israeli-Polish statement on the Holocaust and its commemoration!

הוגשה בקשה לפי חוק חופש המידע בעניין שיתוף חוקרי/ות שואה בהכנת ההצהרה המשותפת המבישה של ישראל ופולין! עברית להלן

The racist right wing Israeli government has accepted the racist right wing Polish government's position on the Holocaust, apparently for cynical purposes and without consulting Holocaust researchers.

Professor Yehuda Bauer, one of the world's leading Holocaust researchers, called Netanyahu's move "treason", adding that Israel has granted its "stamp of approval to the [right wing] Polish narrative", although it's a "totally fictitious story". Professor Bauer believes that even after the annulment of the Polish penal code clause which makes it illegal to ascribe to the Polish people responsibility for the Holocaust, the current Polish government will use the Polish civil code to prosecute Polish researchers who criticize the government's lie. Bauer summarized: "The Poles have deceived us, they have played a trick on us and we went along, because for the State of Israel the political-economic-military relations with Poland are more important than such a small thing, the Holocaust".

The statement was apparently drafted in by a closed forum at a meeting at Mossad headquarters, without any serious consultation of the relevant professionals.

Therefore. the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs is requested to disclose all relevant information in the case.

Furthermore, Israeli journalist Gili Cohen reports that Netanyahu is pressuring Poland (and Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic) to move its embassy to Jerusalem, and the shameful Israeli-Polish declaration may be Netanyahu's gift in exchange.

Representing the petitioners: Attorney Eitay Mack.

The memory of the Nazi-inflicted Holocaust, and all its victims - Jews, Romani, political dissidents, disabled people, LGBTQ people and others - is NOT FOR SALE!!!

מאת עו"ד איתי מק:

"הוגשה בקשה לפי חוק חופש המידע בעניין שיתוף חוקרי/ות שואה בהכנת ההצהרה המשותפת של ישראל ופולין:

יחד עם פעילות ופעילי זכויות האדם רעיה רותם, רם כהן, תמר להן, ורדה חלד, רוני סגולי, עירית הלביא, ד"ר ניב גורדון, קלאודיו קוגון, גלעד ליברמן, גיא בוטביה, שאול צ'ריקובר, עופר ניימן וד"ר חנה ספרן, הוגשה בקשה לפי חוק חופש המידע בעניין שיתוף חוקרי/ות שואה בהכנת ההצהרה המשותפת של ישראל ופולין.

ביום 27.6.2018 הקריא ראש הממשלה ושר החוץ, בנימין נתניהו, הצהרה משותפת עם ממשלת פולין. בראיון לרון נשיאל ב"כאן ב", פרופ' יהודה באואר, חתן פרס ישראל ומבכירי חוקרי השואה, הגדיר את ההצהרה "בגידה". לדבריו, ישראל קיבלה את הנרטיב הפולני ו"נתנה לו גושפנקה", אף כי הוא "סיפור שקרי לגמרי". באואר העריך כי גם אחרי ביטול הסעיף הפלילי בחוק הפולני האוסר לייחס לעם הפולני אחריות לפשעי השואה, פולין תשתמש בחוק האזרחי כדי לרדוף חוקרים פולנים. באואר סיכם "הפולנים הונו אותנו, סובבו אותנו על האצבע ואנחנו הסכמנו לזה, כי למדינת ישראל יותר חשובים היחסים הכלכליים-ביטחוניים-פוליטיים עם פולין מאשר עסק קטן כזה, כמו השואה".

נוסח ההצהרה גובש במחשכים בהובלת פרופ' יעקב נגל וד"ר יוסף צ'חנובר, כולל לפי הפרסומים בפגישה שהתקיימה בבסיס של המוסד..זאת אף שראוי להחליט על הצהרות היסטוריות מסוג זה רק לאחר דיון מעמיק עם מומחים לנושא והציבור. על פני הדברים, נראה כי ההצהרה גובשה במחטף ומבלי לקיים התייעצות רצינית עם אנשי המקצוע הרלוונטיים.

לכן, משרד החוץ התבקש למסור לנו את פרטי חוקרי/ות השואה והמוסדות האקדמיים ולחקר השואה שהכינו ואישרו את נוסח ההצהרה שפורסם.

כזכור, כדי להעביר את שגרירות פרגוואי לירושלים ממשלת נתניהו הייתה מוכנה לטייח את עברה הנאצי של המדינה. עתה העיתונאית גילי כהן, מתאגיד השידור הציבורי, חושפת כי הטירוף של השבועות האחרונים גם קשור לעניין:
https://twitter.com/kann_news/status/1013481691359465472

Top Holocaust Historian: Netanyahu’s Deal on Poland’s Holocaust Law ‘A Betrayal' That 'Hurts the Jewish People'

Israel agreed to the Polish narrative ‘because to the State of Israel, economic, security and political ties are more important than a little matter like the Holocaust,' Yehuda Bauer says

Ofer Aderet

Jun 30, 2018 9:53 PM

Yehuda Bauer, an Israel Prize-winning Holocaust historian at Yad Vashem, said the Israeli-Polish statement that followed Poland’s revisiting of its controversial “Holocaust law” was a “betrayal” that “hurt the Jewish people and the memory of the Holocaust.”

In a radio interview, the 92-year-old said the backtracking on the law and the signing of a joint statement with Poland was “a small achievement and a very big mistake, bordering on betrayal.”

Bauer said Israel had accepted the Polish narrative and “legitimized it,” even though it was a “completely mendacious story.”

Later in the interview, Bauer repeated his stance, saying “the joint statement is betrayal, betrayal, betrayal.”

On Wednesday, following secret negotiations between Israel and Poland, Warsaw said it would abolish the law’s clauses threatening imprisonment for anyone who claimed that the Polish nation was involved in Nazi crimes.

In the joint declaration, read live on television Wednesday by both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki, only one sentence refers to the part played by Poles in the murder of Jews: “We acknowledge and condemn every single case of cruelty against Jews perpetrated by Poles during World War II.”

File photo: Yehuda Bauer in 2006. Kobi Gideon / GPO

Later the declaration states that “some people” assisted the Nazis, doing so “regardless of their origin.” It also claims that “numerous Poles” risked their lives to save Jews.

Bauer came out harshly against these words. “This is a complete lie,” he said. “What is ‘regardless of their origin’? Were they born on the moon? It’s Poles, and not one or two.”

Regarding Poles who saved Jews, and the fact that the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial has recognized around 6,700 Righteous Among the Nations, Bauer said this number was far from “numerous.”

“Even if we assume that the real figure is 200,000, out of 21 million Poles, that’s only 1 percent,” he said. “What about the other 99 percent?” According to Bauer, the joint declaration “devalues the true Righteous Among the Nations and minimizes the value of their heroism.”

Bauer said the Poles “cheated us, twisted us around their finger and we agreed to it because to the State of Israel, economic, security and political ties are more important than a little matter like the Holocaust.”

Bauer said that by signing the declaration, Israel had betrayed Polish historians who had been persecuted by the Polish government because they “tell the truth.” He was referring to scholars such as Prof. Jan Tomasz Gross and Jan Grabowsky, who research the role of Poles’ involvement in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust.

Bauer said Poland would still use civil law to persecute Polish scholars who “tell the truth.”

“They will demand money from them, they will impoverish them, they will keep funding from them. And we are legitimizing [this] . They will say: ‘What do you want, the Israelis agreed to this, why are you making noise?’”