Despite an Election Spat Netanyahu Agreed to a Holocaust Law Making Accusations of Polish Complicity in the Holocaust a civil offence
What better way to celebrate Good Friday residents of the small Polish town
of Pruchnik thought, than to punish the killers of Christ. Unfortunately Jews are
rather scarce in Poland today, owing to the fact that 90% of them were burnt in
the Holocaust and most of those who remained after the war fled after pogroms
at places like Kielce.
So unfortunately they had to settle for second best, burning
an effigy of Judas, dressed up as a Hasidic Jew.
To be fair to the Pruchniks, in times gone by it wouldn’t have been an
effigy but a real live Jew as Easter time was the occasion for pogroms in
places like Kishinev. [See The
pogrom that transformed 20th century Jewry]
All of this is no surprise because Poland is ruled by the far-Right Law
and Justice party (PiS) whose government is populated with anti-Semites. Our Conservative Party is in alliance with the L&J Party and the Jewish Chronicle's Editor Stephen Pollard defended its MEP, Michal Kaminski as 'one of the greatest friends to the Jews in a town where antisemitism and a visceral loathing of Israel are rife.' because support for Israel in Pollard's view washes out antisemitism.
Poland’s
Defence Minister Antoni
Macierewicz told
the anti-Semitic Catholic station Radio Marya that whilst he acknowledged that there was a debate about the
authenticity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Czarist forgery which
alleges a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world (actually this debate was settled
by The Times in a
series of articles in August 1921) “Experience
shows that there are such groups in Jewish circles.”
One should add that it’s not only in Poland that a belief in world Jewish
conspiracies is alive and well. Israel’s best friend, Donald Trump explained
on Oct. 13 2016 during
his election campaign that Hillary Clinton, “meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction
of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers.” Which
probably explains
why the one country in the world where Trump is more popular than unpopular is
the State of Israel.
 |
| A commemoration of the massacre of Jews at Jedwabne in July 1941 which Polish government ministers deny occurred |
PiS’s leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski once said Muslim refugees carried “various parasites and protozoa” and the government’s
education minister Anna Zalewska discounted two well-documented massacres of Jews, including
Jedwabne, by calling it a matter of “opinion ”. Jedwabne, a village in
Eastern Poland was 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.
Because there aren’t that many Jews now in Poland a right-wing
publication Tylko
Polska, or Only Poland published an article on ‘How
to Spot a Jew’ which helpfully included “names, anthropological features, expressions, appearances, character
traits, methods of operation.’ To be fair the publication has now been removed from the package
of papers sent to law makers. Quite why it was ever part of that package is
another matter.
You can understand Netanyahu’s dilemma though. As Slavoj
Zizek observed
in The Independent Poland is ‘Israel's most loyal EU
ally despite its ongoing problems with antisemitism.’ In February 2018 Poland’s Senate
approved a Holocaust law
that made reference to Polish
death camps a criminal offence
and the legislation criminalised any mention of Poles “being responsible
or complicit in
the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich.”.
The bill 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.
As you can
imagine this caused Netanyahu immense difficulties as the anti-Semitic governments
of Eastern Europe just happen to be Israel’s best friends, as is normally the
case with anti-Semites.
Poland's anti-Semitic Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki with a racist friend
Netanyahu therefore
cooked up a deal with the Polish government that removed prison sentences for
mentioning Polish complicity in the Holocaust whilst at the same time inviting
to Israel the anti-Semitic far-Right Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban.
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 15th and July 7th
1944 he probably was exceptional.
There has been a resurgence of far-right sentiment in Poland. 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
Professor Yehuda Bauer, a Zionist
Holocaust historian, called
Netanyahu's move to accept Poland’s amended Holocaust law "a betrayal".
Bauer was reported
as saying that Israel
gave its “seal of approval” to the Polish
government’s narrative and accused the Israeli government of sacrificing truth
and justice “for its current economic,
security and political interests.”
Bauer argued 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 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".
See my previous story on this Israel
finds that the Holocaust is becoming inconvenient when it comes to friendship
with far-Right regimes
However we can rest assured that even if Israel will turn a blind eye to
the latest outrage in Poland it will be assiduous in combating ‘anti-Semitism’
in the Labour Party!
Tony Greenstein
Times of Israel
A resident of the small town of Pruchnik in southeast Poland beats up an
effigy of Judah Iscariot featuring a long nose and ultra-Orthodox sidecurls and
brimmed hat, on April 19, 2019. (Screenshot: Twitter)
Beating the Jew in Poland - it's almost as popular as beating Palestinians in Israel
Residents of a small town in Poland on Friday
marked Good Friday by making a large doll of Judas Iscariot featuring classic
anti-Semitic tropes, beating it up, hanging it from a tree and then burning it.
The ritual is meant to symbolize a public trial for
Judas, who according to Christian tradition betrayed Jesus and turned him in to
the Romans, leading to his crucifixion. Good Friday marks the day when Jesus is
believed to have been crucified.
The ceremony featured several anti-Semitic elements
in the small town of Pruchnik in southeastern Poland, Israel’s Kan public
broadcaster reported on Sunday.
The effigy was given a brimmed hat and sidelocks,
making it resemble an ultra-Orthodox Jew, along with a long nose, a trope used
by Nazi Germany and by anti-Semites worldwide to demonize and dehumanize Jews.
The words “Judas” and “traitor” were written on the
doll’s chest.
The doll was featured in the town’s central square
in the morning, with its “trial” beginning in the late afternoon.
The residents symbolically sentenced Judas to
death, hanged the doll from a tall tree, and then dragged it through the
streets with the public — including many children — beating it up with sticks.
The ceremony ended with the effigy being burned.
The ceremony has ancient roots, according to the
report, and in some cases the doll was also marked as Jewish using a Star of
David on its arm.
Senior Israeli opposition figure Yair Lapid, No. 2
on the centrist Blue and White party, responded to the report by saying that
“hatred of Jews is continuing to poison the air.
“The Poles need to fight anti-Semitism, not pass
laws denying their part in the Holocaust,” Lapid continued. “The Netanyahu
government should stop stuttering and unequivocally condemn [it].”
Poland, which was home to Europe’s largest Jewish
community before the occupation by Nazi Germany (1939-1945), has seen a rise in
anti-Semitic incidents in recent
years.
Israel and Poland have recently seen diplomatic
tensions over a controversial law that forbids blaming the Polish nation for
Nazi crimes. That crisis was triggered anew in February after Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu said during a visit to the country that some Poles
collaborated with the Germans during the Holocaust.
He said speaking about the complicity of
individuals was permissible despite the law. But his comment, which was
misrepresented in some media to include all Poles, triggered a diplomatic spat.
It escalated when Israel’s acting foreign minister, Israel Katz, later said that
Poles take in “anti-Semitism
with their mothers’ milk.”
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