The European Union, ever since it was a common market, holds an inherently hostile attitude toward Israel. Ever since the 1970s, the German-French axis that serves as the basis for the EU has – for economic, political, ideological, and antisemitic reasons – adopted the PLO's stances and has used the EU to battle the Jewish state's existence.
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Even western European countries that were friendly to Israel, like the Netherlands and a few of the Scandinavian countries – ultimately adopted the anti-Israel approach. Reasons for this include demographics: they have seen massive immigration of Arab and Muslim immigrants, and these immigrant communities have become political forces. Hate for Israel has become a uniting force that supposedly calms tensions between the different groups.
The expansion of the EU to central and eastern Europe caused this reality to change. It took time for the new members to gather up the courage to break with the status quo that had been created in many areas of the EU – including hostility toward Israel. But in the past decade, the "new Europeans" under conservative, right-wing governments became aware and self-confident, which allowed them to change the rules of the game. The days of the automatic anti-Israel consensus are over. Poland, under the conservative government led by a "law and order" party, played a key role in bringing about this change, along with the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, the Baltic states, and even Romania and Bulgaria, to a certain extent.
Poland as the fifth-largest population in the EU, one of the fastest-growing economies in the EU, and is a very important US ally. Israel stood to benefit from the close relationship that developed between Washington and Warsaw, and also benefitted from various and sundry cooperative ventures. High-ranking diplomatic officials in Warsaw told his writer that Poland was one step away from relocating its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
But then Foreign Minister Yair Lapid launched a populist war against Poland. Three years ago, while still in the Opposition, he fired the opening shot with his unchecked attacks against Poland's "Holocaust Law." Now the Foreign Ministry under his leadership is waging a full-front assault over a new law that will restrict the restitution of stolen property. Over these three years, through incitement that verged on racist, Lapid turned one of Israel's closest friends in the EU into a potential enemy.
Lapid accuses the Polish government of Holocaust denial. They do not and never have denied it. Lapid accused it of passing antisemitic laws. They never have. Lapid alleges that by passing the law about property restitution, Poland "has become anti-democratic and anti-liberal."
The restitution law, which had widespread support in Poland's legislature and is designed to implement a ruling by the country's legal system, was passed in the most democratic manner possible and did not spark impassioned political debates, despite the Polish government's shaky standing.
In other words, there is broad consensus in Poland about the need to finally regulate the chaos that existed until now when it came to lawsuits over real estate – some of which served the interests of shady players rather than Holocaust survivors or relatives of people who died at the hands of the Nazis.
But Lapid knows that the capitals of western Europe do not like the Polish "law and order" government, just like they don't like the right-wing governments in Hungary and Slovenia. To curry favor with the "liberal" governments of western Europe, he has adopted a simplistic narrative that the government of Poland is "anti-democratic" and "anti-liberal."
In one fell swoop, Lapid is wrecking Israel's relations with one of its most important allies, all to appeal to the "liberal" axis in the EU, the one that is hostile to Israel. Lapid's populist "anti-Polism" will bolster the antisemitic fringes that exist in Polish society and encourage anti-Israeli attitudes in a country where is barely exists.
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