A dispute has flared up between Warsaw and the Israeli government following the death of a Polish employee of the aid organization World Central Kitchen in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday in the Gaza Strip.
On Wednesday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk criticized the reaction of his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu to the incident and a statement made by Israel's ambassador to Poland, Yacov Livne.
"Prime Minister Netanyahu, Ambassador Livne, the vast majority of Poles showed solidarity with Israel after the Hamas attack," Tusk wrote on X, formerly Twitter. "You are putting this solidarity to the test. The tragic attack on the volunteers and your reaction arouse understandable anger."
Polish citizen Damian Sobol was one of the seven aid workers killed in the Israeli army airstrike. Netanyahu said Israel was responsible and spoke of "tragic case of an unintentional strike." He said such things happen in war.
Livne sparked a wave of outrage in Poland following Sobol's death with accusations of anti-Semitism. Israel's ambassador to Poland was referring to a post by opposition politician Krzysztof Bosak from the radical right-wing Confederation party on X.
Bosak had pointed out that the convoy attacked by Israel was labelled as humanitarian aid. "It appears that the aim of the Israeli command is to terrorize humanitarian organizations and increase the famine among the Palestinians," wrote Bosak. "This has a name: war crimes."
In his response, Livne wrote that Bosak still refuses to condemn the massacres of October 7. His party colleague Grzegorz Braun also extinguished a Hanukkah candlestick in the Polish parliament with a fire extinguisher.
"Conclusion: anti-Semites always remain anti-Semites, and Israel remains a democratic Jewish state that fights for its right to exist," Livne said.
