Sometimes I think that Netanyahu is what a smart Trump would look like.
even in a parallel universe… trump would still be a moron.
And while Trump is tweeting about SNL, the real tensions and hotspots in the world continue to overheat and approach scary levels of conflict and disruption. Everything we are doing officially is helping to contribute to the destabilization. As much real damage as Trump is doing to the domestic front, he is also contributing significantly to the rise of autocracy, kleptocracy and racism world wide. We did not cause it, but we are doing absolutely nothing to reduce it, and instead we are encouraging it with every stupid utterance out of this clueless administration.
Trump is merely carrying out Putin’s orders
The law was seen by many as an attempt to quash research and discussion of any Poles who participated in decimating Poland’s Jewish population.
Not to be picky, but to decimate is to reduce by a tenth; over 85% of Jews in Poland were exterminated.
Poland’s nationalist government has sought to focus only on cases of heroism by Poles during Germany’s World War II occupation of the country.
I think this movie has already played in Russia and Ukraine.
Smart and corrupt as opposed to dumb and corrupt?
We spent several days in the Old Town of Krakow a few years ago with a Road Scholar tour. The Jewish issue came up a lot. We did a quickie tour of the Jewish Quarter and there was an optional tour of one of the concentration camps. I cannot “tour” a place where so many were methodically and callously murdered. The local tour guide was happy to blather on about their pride in their Jewish population. Maybe so, but there were around 64,000 Jews there before 1941 and now there are closer to 100 religious Jews. I got the distinct impression that if the pre-war population were to reappear, they would not be so happy.
When we were there, John Paul II was still pope and was a great focus of Polish pride. In the Old Town, which is not so big, there are three major cathedrals and dozens of smaller churches. I don’t recall seeing any but Catholic, but there may be some other choices. The religious fervor is palpable. It reminds me of our most gung-ho evangelicals who would be happy to do you harm if you don’t buy what they’re selling. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki can be as prickly as he wants, but Poles did what they did and, when push comes to shove, it wouldn’t be hard for them assume that stance again.
Didn’t Poles kill off a bunch of the Jews who survived the Holocaust and returned to Poland to reclaim property?
I remember reading about a pogrom of sorts by the Poles after the war was over in Kielce, Poland with 42 dead. According to Wikipedia the number of Jews in Poland murdered after the war numbered from 400 to 2000. It seems the right wing government in Poland is trying to bury the past instead of facing up to it.
Anti-semitism was rife in Poland around WWII. Many Poles did cooperate with the SS in their pogroms toward Polish Jews, and in the individual and mass murder of Polish Jews. Local cooperation in mass murder was a common feature across the vast area taken over by the Wehrmacht and SS. For example, see Anatomy of a Genocide by Omer Bartov, describing events in the town of Buczacz, which was Polish up to the start of WWII.
Polish nationalism and Catholicism go hand in hand. The Catholic who has a good heart and soul is a rare Catholic. That is to say, Christians generally are the opposite of what they advertise themselves as.
Netanyahu is a right-wing asshole. But he is right about Poland.
If Netanyahu were smart, and not merely shrewd and possessed of survival instincts, he would have aligned with the Jewish diaspora and not the intolerant right. Politically, the Jewish disapora tends toward the liberal.
I have read many first-hand accounts and autobiographies of holocaust survivors - without exception they say that poland was the worst in terms of anti-semitism.
The irony is that Netanyahu is a big fan of rightwing nationalists like himself dominating the international order and running things. It will cost Israel big, at some point. Years of undermining international law and basic norms of human rights, years of forming corrupt alliances with fascistic Gulf states and fascistic Americans–the people of Israel will one day regret it. This run-in with his counterpart in Poland is a taste of things to come, unfortunately.
Both Netanyahu’s office and the newspaper said he was misquoted due to an editing error.
They both further denied as Fake News reports that Netanyahu’s feet were on the desk when he made the remarks, in that universal sign of disrespect.
Jews I’ve met who grew up in Poland don’t want to talk about it. They just grimace and shake their heads.
Poland’s anti-semitism is threaded through the nation.