“Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki slammed Katz’s remarks as “nothing short of racism,” likening his words to those of a “radical extremist.””
Someone didn’t get the memo: when you claim victimhood, particularly if you’re Israel, who wins by default on any and all competing claims of victimization, you get to say whatever racist bigoted shit you want about anyone you accuse of being your victimizer AND IT MUST BE ACCEPTED AS TRUTH OR THE DENIAL IS MERELY FURTHER VICTIMIZATION.
I’m not equating anything. It is actually you who are the one trying to tie these together in order to try and discredit my point. Which was that it is rich that the Israelis are getting huffy over this gaff when they themselves get upset over people calling out their own atrocities. The appropriate response should have been an apology for any offense and a recognition that this happened generations ago and is not a reflection of modern Poland. But I don’t think they care because the current Israeli government consists of a bunch of people who use victim hood as a political weapon.
How many instances of overt or attempted incidents of voter supression… GA,OH, MI,TX…etc. do we need to deal with before reality is obvious?
Are there still Polish-Americans who believe this nonsense?
The Jews settled in Commonwealth for the same reasons “Germans” moved to the Polish Commonwealth. “Germans” in quotation marks because they were settling on “German settlement law” (giving them freedom from taxing for a time), not because they were actual Germans. Pretty much every European and Middle-eastern nation joined that effort. The Commonwealth lands were at the time for Europeans what the US was for the most of the 20th century to the world. People didn’t go to the US to find peace. They went to find opportunity. Yes, in the Jewish case the reason for leaving was political, but the reason for settling in the Commonwealth was - relatively low population level offering opportunities not found elsewhere. Same as immigrants here. And let’s keep in mind that the “State” as we understand it today - involved in most of our lives - is an 18th century development.
That’s not a history of a tolerant centuries on the Commonwealth lands. There were cases of anti-Semitic murders. Sometime mass murders. This was never a place of tolerance. Especially not since the Counter-Reformation. This was a process that was very formative in terms of creating what is today’s Poland, and which was build on prejudice against The Other. Still is. (Since the beginning of the 17th century you couldn’t build any new temples but Catholic… There was an actual law forbidding it, despite existence of large pockets of protestants in the area…) That process led to strong assimilation of the settlers into the local population, except for the Jews, who couldn’t… and that made them a target.
That’s what happened in the Commonwealth, not some magic “tolerance”.
I don’t know if Poles are antisemitic. But I do know they are taught to defend their history. Which is a stupid idea. History doesn’t need defending. But somehow it doesn’t get thru.
As to the subject at hand: yes two sh.tty governments are trying to use antisemitism for their own purposes (elections in both countries). They may be successful. Because it worked before pretty much always.