Polish president: Israel is responsible for all recent antisemitism in Poland

Polish president Andrzej Duda claimed that Israel was responsible for the latest antisemitic attacks in Poland in a meeting on Wednesday with Jewish leaders in the Polish consulate in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, according to the Jewish Insider.

Duda’s claims were in response to Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, who in February said that Poles “suckle antisemitism with their mother’s milk.” He was meeting with representatives from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Duda said Katz’s comments were a “humiliation,” then suggesting that the increase in antisemitic attacks in Poland was a reaction to Katz’s comments, according to attendees of the meeting with Duda.

Duda went on to say that several advisors had suggested that he should not go to Israel until Katz apologizes.

Holocaust survivor Edward Mosberg, who was awarded Poland’s Order of Merit, defended Duda, saying that Israeli Jews “like Israel Katz” are responsible for the rise in antisemitism. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach then cut Mosberg off, according to one attendee.

Earlier in the year, a diplomatic crisis broke out between Poland and Israel after Poland made it illegal to accuse the country of complicity in Nazi war crimes. Duda then blamed Israel for the crisis.

“The side that started the crisis should also finish it,” Duda told The Jerusalem Post in an exclusive interview at the Presidential Palace in March. Asked if that would be Israel, he said: “Yes. I expect friendship and respect. On both sides.”

“I will never agree with statements that Poles as a nation participated in the Holocaust or Poland participated in the Holocaust,” he continued. “It humiliates us and hurts us. In my own family, there were people murdered by the Germans, and first and foremost [to say the contrary] waters down what really happened.”