Associates of Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Monday that Morawiecki was considering whether to recall Poland's ambassador to Israel and possibly even cut off diplomatic ties with Israel following comments by acting Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz about the Poles' complicity in the Holocaust.
Interviewed for the weekly Israel Hayom-i24NEWS election broadcast Sunday night, Katz said, "There were many Poles who collaborated with the Nazis. That's what [the late Prime Minister] Yitzhak Shamir said. They murdered his father. 'The Poles suckle anti-Semitism from their mother's breast.'
"No one will tell us how to express ourselves and remember the fallen," Katz said.
Four years after starting to serve as foreign minister, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday that he had appointed Katz as interim foreign minister until a new government could be established after the April 9 election.
The acting foreign minister said that the recent issues between Poland and Israel over "misunderstandings" had been ironed out and that the Visegrád conference would not be affected.
"The prime minister expressed himself, he made himself clear. I am the son of Holocaust survivors, and like every Israeli and Jew, we will not forget and we will not forgive," Katz said.
"Alongside that, there is foreign policy, that the prime minister is leading, and the public knows he is directing foreign policy in the interest of the state, and that's where we are now. The foreign minister will come, and the common interest will remain the same.
"There is no crisis with Poland. I'm not a commentator, I've heard there are also elections there. Naturally, everyone is appealing to their own publics, but there have been conversations between the prime minister and the prime minister of Poland. These ties will continue," Katz said.
Poland's ambassador to Israel, Marek Magierowski, said in response to Katz's comments: "It's astonishing that the new Israeli foreign minister made disgraceful, racist remarks. That is completely unacceptable."
Morawiecki's chief of staff, Michał Dworczyk, said following Katz's comments that his government was weighing whether or not to participate in the Visegrád Conference in Jerusalem this week as planned.
"The Israeli foreign minister's declaration is disgraceful. We expect a clarification from the Israeli authorities," Dworczyk said.
Poland's deputy foreign minister, Bartosz Cichocki, responded to Katz's remarks on Monday and said, "Poland is proud to be part of the effort to promote peace and democracy in the Middle East and protect Israel's right to security. But we will not stand by in the face of anti-Polish racism."
In a less controversial section of the interview, Katz disparaged Israel Resilience party leader Benny Gantz.
Touching on whether Gantz had tried to "imitate" Netanyahu's policies in his speech at the Munich Security Conference on Sunday, Katz said that unlike Netanyahu, who he said had "convinced" U.S. President Donald Trump, among others, to cancel the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and issue harsh sanctions against Tehran, Gantz had supported the nuclear deal.
"Benny Gantz supports things that he opposed earlier. He supported the nuclear deal with Iran, and now he's taking a position against the deal." Katz said.
"So I would measure things not just according to the English, and his performance in the side room, but according to the actual policies. Netanyahu was leading a policy even when he was alone, and succeeded, and Benny Gantz talks about things that are the opposite [of] what he said in the past."
Katz also said he wasn't thinking about what position he would be assigned after the election and refused to respond when asked if he wanted to hold on to the foreign affairs portfolio.
