Following reports of a diplomatic crisis between Jerusalem and Warsaw over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's comments at a conference in the Polish capital, a spokesman for Poland Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki issued a statement saying, "We have received clarifications from Israel and the crisis is over. This was journalistic manipulation."
According to reports in the media, Thursday, Morawiecki had convened his advisers for an emergency meeting in response to remarks Netanyahu allegedly made said while in Warsaw for a conference on Middle East security.
Netanyahu sparked controversy when his remark, Thursday, that "Poles cooperated with the Nazis" was misinterpreted. According to an official with close ties to the Polish premier, Morawiecki's office had even weighed the possibility of canceling the Visegrád conference, to be held next week in Beersheba and attended by the prime ministers of the Visegrád Group member states: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
Polish President Andrzej Duda threated on Twitter not to hold the conference in Israel, saying, "If the comments attributed to Netanyahu are correct." He added that in such a case, Israel "is not a good place to hold the conference."
In a press conference following the Middle East conference in Warsaw, Netanyahu was asked about the Polish law that makes it illegal to blame the Polish nation for Holocaust crimes. Poland and Israel were embroiled in a bitter dispute over the law, which Israel saw as an attempt by Poland to suppress discussion of the killing of Jews by Poles during the wartime German occupation.
The dispute was resolved when Poland softened the law and Netanyahu and his Polish counterpart agreed on a joint declaration stressing the involvement of the Polish resistance in helping Jews. It was seen as a diplomatic coup for Poland but Netanyahu faced criticism from historians in Israel, including at Yad Vashem, for agreeing to a statement that they said distorted history.
Netanyahu said that the law had not been used against anyone and that "here I am saying Poles cooperated with the Nazis. I know the history, and I don't whitewash it. I bring it up."
Netanyahu further said that he himself raises the issue in meetings with European leaders instanced in which government praise exalted figures in their countries who were in fact partners to the murder of Jews.
He said, "I bring it up. The idea that we distort history or hide it is nonsense." He said the problem of anti-Semitism was, in fact, more prevalent in Western Europe, and gave the U.K. as an example. Ninety-percent of British Jews believe that the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn is anti-Semitic. Three British Jewish newspapers have warned that a government led Corbyn would be an "existential threat to Jewish life in this country."
Netanyahu also said that while anti-Semitism had been a permanent feature on the Right for many years, there has been an increase in the anarchist Left and in Muslim centers.
On Wednesday, veteran NBC journalist Andrea Mitchell learned that lesson after she said during a live Wednesday evening report from Warsaw that Jews in the ghetto rose up against the "Polish and Nazi regime."
The Polish Embassy in Washington called the conflating of occupied Poland with the occupying German Nazis "a serious distortion of history" and said MSNBC should clarify the historical facts.
Late Thursday, Mitchell issued an apology on Twitter.
"I misspoke on the show yesterday when I discussed the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. To be clear, the Polish government was not involved in these horrific acts. I apologize for the unfortunate inaccuracy," she wrote.
