Poland on Monday summoned the Israeli ambassador for a reprimand — the second in four days — and was considering canceling altogether its participation in a conference in Israel this week and reportedly even recalling its envoy from the Jewish state after Israel’s new acting foreign minister said that the Poles “suckle anti-Semitism with their mother’s milk”, Trend reports referring to The Times of Israel.
The Polish Embassy told The Times of Israel that a decision has not yet been made on Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz’s participation in the summit, and the “prime minister is awaiting an appropriate reaction from Israeli authorities.”
The head of Poland’s prime minister’s office, Michal Dworczyk, told state radio Monday that Israel Katz’s comments were “disgraceful.”
“In the light of this statement, any participation of representatives of the Polish state in the V4 summit in Israel is under a very big question mark,” Dworczyk said, according to the Reuters news agency.
“We are considering recalling the Polish ambassador from Israel,” a source close to Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was quoted as saying by the Ynet news site. “There is a consensus in Poland that what has been done is very severe and cannot be ignored.”
Morawiecki himself warned that if Katz didn’t not apologize for his comments, Poland wouldn’t be sending any officials to the summit.
“This is an example of racist anti-Polonism,” he said, according to Polish media. “At the moment we are waiting for a firm reaction to the reprehensible, unacceptable and simply racist words of the newly appointed foreign minister of Israel.”
“If there is no such reaction from the other side, we will wish them the best possible meeting, but [Foreign] Minister Jacek Czaputowicz will also not attend the meeting in Israel,” he added.
Morawiecki on Sunday canceled his trip to Israel for the high-level summit, as a diplomatic spat continued over comments made last week by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Polish collaboration with the Nazis. Czaputowicz was expected to instead attend the summit of the so-called Visegrad Group of central European countries.
Katz made the remark in a TV interview on Sunday, after earlier the same day he was appointed acting foreign minister by Netanyahu.
“I am a son of Holocaust survivors and I was even born and grew up in a community made up of Holocaust survivors,” Katz told Channel 13. “The memory of the Holocaust is something we cannot compromise about; it is clear and we won’t forget or forgive.
“In diplomacy you try not to offend, but nobody will change the historical truth to do something like that,” he added. “Poles collaborated with the Nazis, definitely. As [former prime minister] Yitzhak Shamir said, they suckle anti-Semitism with their mother’s milk.”
On Monday morning Katz told Israel Radio that “the Poles took part in the extermination of Jews in the Holocaust. Poland became the biggest cemetery of the Jewish people.”