Israel has postponed next week’s scheduled visit of Poland’s national security adviser, to show displeasure over the Polish Senate’s passage of a bill to criminalize the implicating of Poland in the Holocaust, but stopped short of recalling its ambassador for consultations.
One official in Jerusalem confirmed on Thursday that if a decision is made to recall the ambassador, it would most likely not happen before Poland’s President Andrzej Duda signs the bill into law. Having now passed both houses of the Polish legislature, Duda’s signature is the last step before the bill – which among other things would impose a three-year prison sentence for saying “Polish death camps” – becomes law.
Duda, who expressed support for the law on Tuesday, has 21 days to sign the legislation.
Despite an agreement to set up teams to discuss the legislation that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki reached in a phone conversation on Sunday night, the Senate voted early on the bill on Thursday morning; it handily passed by a vote of 57-23, with two abstentions.
“We, the Poles, were victims, as were the Jews,” Deputy Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said before the vote. “It is a duty of every Pole to defend the good name of Poland. Just as the Jews, we were victims.”
Diplomatic officials in Jerusalem were miffed that the Senate voted before the teams even convened to discuss the matter, and said this ran against the...read more at JPost
Israel has postponed next week’s scheduled visit of Poland’s national security adviser, to show displeasure over the Polish Senate’s passage of a bill to criminalize the implicating of Poland in the Holocaust, but stopped short of recalling its ambassador for consultations.
One official in Jerusalem confirmed on Thursday that if a decision is made to recall the ambassador, it would most likely not happen before Poland’s President Andrzej Duda signs the bill into law. Having now passed both houses of the Polish legislature, Duda’s signature is the last step before the bill – which among other things would impose a three-year prison sentence for saying “Polish death camps” – becomes law.
Duda, who expressed support for the law on Tuesday, has 21 days to sign the legislation.
Despite an agreement to set up teams to discuss the legislation that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki reached in a phone conversation on Sunday night, the Senate voted early on the bill on Thursday morning; it handily passed by a vote of 57-23, with two abstentions.
“We, the Poles, were victims, as were the Jews,” Deputy Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said before the vote. “It is a duty of every Pole to defend the good name of Poland. Just as the Jews, we were victims.”
Diplomatic officials in Jerusalem were miffed that the Senate voted before the teams even convened to discuss the matter, and said this ran against the...read more at JPost
