Poland is now a colony not only for Brussels or Washington, but even for Tel-Aviv – political analyst
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman has demanded that the Poles cancel a recent amendment to the Administrative Offences Code that makes it impossible to investigate conflicts involving the nationalisation of property, including Jewish property
Lior Hayat, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, recalled that in recent months Israel hфad opposed the amendment to the code, and threatened that relations with the Republic of Poland would cool again if the bill was passed. And so it happened – after Andrzej Duda signed the amendments, Yair Lapid, Israel’s foreign minister, called it “an immoral, anti-Semitic law”, and summoned staff from his embassy in Warsaw back to Israel for consultations, while advising the Polish ambassador in Israel to do the same.
“Unfortunately, despite the fact that we have repeatedly spoken about it publicly, this law was passed and will now have a negative effect on Holocaust survivors and their families”, – the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said in an interview.
In his view, changes must be made in Polish policy that will finally “allow Holocaust survivors to have the right to touch their own memory and regain their ties to the life they led on Polish territories before the Holocaust.” According to Hayat, a path of diplomacy must be found “to repeal this new law and change the way it will apply to Holocaust victims and survivors.”
Lior Hayat avoided answering the question of whether there are talks with the Polish side on this issue.
The spokesman described relations with Poland as important, pointing to the large number of Polish natives living in Israel and the fact that there was a large Jewish diaspora in Poland before the Holocaust. Hayat suggested that eventually there will be a normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries: “We still have an embassy in Poland, there is also a Polish embassy in Israel. I hope we will get back to the way the situation was before”.
As we wrote earlier, at the end of June the Sejm adopted an amendment to the Code of Administrative Offences which changes the norm requiring that an administrative decision be declared invalid because of a “gross violation of the law” – no matter how long ago it was committed. The Code now establishes a statute of limitations for such situations. Thus, if more than 30 years have elapsed, there will be no further opportunity to challenge an unlawful decision.
The amendment above all relates to Jewish claims to property lost during the Holocaust that was taken from concentration camp prisoners, including Poles. It is for this that Poland has been severely criticised by Israel. The US State Department spokesman Ned Price did the same, calling on the Polish authorities to suspend further legislative process and abandon the decisions taken.
Andrzej Zapalowski, a professor at Rzeszów University and former member of the Sejm, political scientist, commented on the statement as follows:
“We’ve waited! It is not only Washington or Brussels that consider Poland as a colony, but the eight-million-strong understatement is beginning to speak in the same vein!”.
In spite of everything, Andrzej Duda signed the amendment in the middle of August this year.