Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not be able to travel to Poland for the 80th annual commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp because he fears being arrested on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court at the Hague.
Arab 48 reports that the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, the organizer of the ceremony to be held on January 27, Deputy Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, said, “We are bound to respect the decision of the International Criminal Court in the Hague.”
Rzeczpospolita reported that the Israeli state never asked that Netanyahu participate in the ceremonies, since the Israelis know very well what Warsaw’s response would be if Netanyahu traveled there.
Netanyahu has throughout his political career played politics with the Holocaust, so it is deeply ironic that he cannot attend the ceremony because he is charged with himself having committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Genocide scholars have criticized the use of the Holocaust to justify Israeli atrocities in Gaza.
The ICC issued the arrest warrant for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on November 21, 2024 on the charge of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip, including a charge of deliberately starving the Palestinians there.
The countries that have vowed to arrest the Israeli prime minister if he steps foot on their soil include Spain, Holland, Belgium, Ireland, Lithuania, Slovenia. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said, “We cannot implement a double standard.”
There is a background to the satisfaction Poland might take in arresting Netanyahu, whose father Benzion Mileikowsky was born in Warsaw. The family changed their name in Israel.
The Poles maintain that the Holocaust was a Nazi German project implemented in part on Polish soil when Poland was occupied and helpless. The Polish parliament in 2018 even passed, and then backed off, a law making it illegal to accuse Poles of having been implicated in the commission of the genocide against the Jews.
In 2019, Netanyahu was quoted as saying in the presence of several journalists, “The Poles collaborated with the Nazis, and I don’t know anyone who was ever sued for such a statement.” He made similar statements on social media, but they were quickly deleted.
Tel Aviv at the time was planning an 8-nation conference in Israel of center-right governments, and the Poles were among the invitees. They boycotted, accusing Netanyahu of racism, which affected the prime minister’s prestige. He then maintained that it was all a misunderstanding and he never said any such thing but had been misquoted.
The two countries clashed again in 2021 over a Polish law limiting any further property claims for damages during the Holocaust. The law was of a piece with the general denial of any Polish culpability in the Holocaust.
Poland has been more sympathetic to Palestinian statehood aspirations than Israel’s right-wing government is comfortable with.
On the other hand, Poland has not itself been vocal in denouncing Israeli actions in Gaza, which Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch categorize as a genocide. Two-thirds of Poles in polling say they don’t want to get involved in the Israel-Palestine dispute.
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