Poland pulls out Israel visit after Netanyahu’s anti-Semitism comments

Poland has pulled out of a summit of central European leaders in Israel because of comments on the Holocaust by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel Katz, who was appointed acting foreign minister on Sunday, said Poles “suckle antisemitism with their mother’s milk”. Speaking on another radio show on Monday morning, he accused all Polish people of harboring “innate” anti-Semitism.

Katz’s comments deepened a diplomatic crisis between the two countries, which began on Thursday when the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said: “Poles cooperated with the Nazis.” His office later said he was misquoted by domestic media as saying “the Poles”, suggesting blame of the entire nation rather than individuals.

Netanyahu's comments were "racist and unacceptable", Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki was quoted as saying ahead of Tuesday's summit in Jerusalem.

The meeting hosted by Israel was meant to bring together the four-nation Visegrad Group: Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia.

On Sunday Morawiecki himself pulled out, saying Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz would go instead, but now the country has pulled out of the summit completely.

Netanyahu had been quoted in Israeli media as saying "Poles co-operated with the Germans" during the Holocaust.

He later issued a clarification saying he was not referring to the Polish nation or all Polish people.

The Polish government says the cancellation of the visit is "an unequivocal signal to other governments and international opinion that historical truth is fundamental".

About six million Polish citizens died in World War Two, of whom about three million were Jews.

The Nazis built many of their most notorious death camps in Poland after occupying the country at the beginning of the war in 1939.