Israelis unite against Polish Holocaust law

Seven decades later, it seems that the only issue capable of uniting the quarrelsome Israelite tribe into a consensus is the Holocaust. On Jan. 26, the Polish parliament passed a law that forbids mentioning the part of the Polish people in the destruction of its Jews, and it set a three-year prison term for anyone using the term “Polish death camp.” The news infuriated all Israelis across the political spectrum, making the splintered Israeli state one combative entity.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett instructed his staff to immediately prepare a lesson plan for mandatory classes to be taught in schools this week regarding the Polish involvement in the Holocaust. “It is a historical fact that many Poles collaborated in the murder of the Jews. They informed on them, turned them over and even committed murder with their own hands,” Bennett explained. Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, the son of Holocaust survivor Yosef Lapid, tweeted that “no Polish law can change history. Poland collaborated in the Holocaust. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered on Polish land without encountering one German officer.”