News

Israel slams bill to outlaw blaming Poles for crimes of WWII

ARON HELLER

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Associated Press•January 27, 2018

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FILE - A Thursday, Jan. 25, 2018 file photo showing Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, gesturing during a conversation as part of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Israeli leaders are angrily criticizing legislation in Poland that would outlaw blaming Poles for the crimes of the Holocaust. Calling the proposed law "baseless," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his country's ambassador to Poland on Saturday, Jan. 27, 2018 to meet with Polish leaders to express his strong disapproval of the bill. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

FILE - A Thursday, Jan. 25, 2018 file photo showing Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, gesturing during a conversation as part of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Israeli leaders are angrily criticizing legislation in Poland that would outlaw blaming Poles for the crimes of the Holocaust. Calling the proposed law "baseless," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his country's ambassador to Poland on Saturday, Jan. 27, 2018 to meet with Polish leaders to express his strong disapproval of the bill. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli leaders angrily criticized pending legislation in Poland that would outlaw blaming Poles for the crimes of the Holocaust, with some accusing the Polish government of outright denial Saturday as the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the proposed law "baseless" and ordered his country's ambassador to Poland to meet with Polish leaders to express his strong opposition.

"One cannot change history, and the Holocaust cannot be denied," he said.

The lower house of the Polish parliament on Friday passed the bill, which prescribes prison time for using phrases such as "Polish death camps" to refer to the killing sites Nazi Germany operated in occupied Poland during World War II.

Many Poles fear such phrasing makes some people incorrectly conclude that Poles had a role in running the camps. But critics say the legislation could have a chilling effect on debating history, harming freedom of expression and opening a window to Holocaust denial.

The bill still needs approval from Poland's Senate and president. However, it marks a dramatic step by the country's current nationalist government to target anyone who tries to undermine its official stance that Poles only were heroes during the war, not Nazi collaborators who committed heinous crimes.

Netanyahu's government generally has had good relations with Poland, which has been recently voting with Israel in international organizations.

At Auschwitz on Saturday evening, Israel's ambassador to Poland, Anna Azari, abandoned a prepared speech to criticize the bill, saying that "everyone in Israel was revolted at this news."

In Israel, which was established three years after the Holocaust and is home to the world's largest community of survivors, the legislation provoked outrage.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, noting that exactly 73 years had passed since the Auschwitz death camp on Polish soil was liberated, cited the words of a former Polish president about how history could not be faked and the truth could not be hidden.

"The Jewish people, the State of Israel, and the entire world must ensure that the Holocaust is recognized for its horrors and atrocities," Rivlin said. "Also among the Polish people, there were those who aided the Nazis in their crimes. Every crime, every offense, must be condemned. They must be examined and revealed."

Today's Poles have been raised on stories of their people's wartime suffering and heroism. Many react viscerally when confronted with the growing body of scholarship about Polish involvement in the killing of Jews.

In a sign of the sensitivities on both sides, Yair Lapid, head of Israel's centrist Yesh Atid party and the son of a survivor, got into a heated Twitter spat Saturday with the Polish Embassy in Israel.

"I utterly condemn the new Polish law which tries to deny Polish complicity in the Holocaust. It was conceived in Germany but hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered without ever meeting a German soldier. There were Polish death camps and no law can ever change that," Lapid wrote.

That sparked the Embassy to respond: "Your unsupportable claims show how badly Holocaust education is needed, even here in Israel."

"My grandmother was murdered in Poland by Germans and Poles," Lapid responded. "I don't need Holocaust education from you. We live with the consequences every day in our collective memory. Your embassy should offer an immediate apology."

To which the embassy retorted: "Shameless."

Israel's foreign ministry said the deputy Polish ambassador to Israel had been summoned for a clarification.

For decades, Polish society avoided discussing the killing of Jews by civilians or denied that anti-Semitism motivated the slayings, blaming all atrocities on the Germans.

A turning point was the publication in 2000 of a book, "Neighbors," by Polish-American sociologist Jan Tomasz Gross, which explored the murder of Jews by their Polish neighbors in the village of Jedwabne. The book resulted in widespread soul-searching and official state apologies.

But since the conservative and nationalistic Law and Justice party consolidated power in 2015, it has sought to stamp out discussions and research on the topic. It demonized Gross and investigated whether he had slandered Poland by asserting that Poles killed more Jews than they killed Germans during the war.

Holocaust researchers have collected ample evidence of Polish villagers who murdered Jews fleeing the Nazis. According to one scholar at Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, of the 160,000-250,000 Jews who escaped and sought help from fellow Poles, about 10 percent to 20 percent survived. The rest were rejected, informed upon or killed by rural Poles, according to the Tel Aviv University scholar, Havi Dreifuss.

At Auschwitz, however, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki stressed the Poles who helped Jews risking their own lives, noting that some 7,000 had been recognized by Yad Vashem but suggesting that the Polish sacrifices have not been acknowledged adequately.

"Jews, Poles, and all victims should be guardians of the memory of all who were murdered by German Nazis. Auschwitz-Birkenau is not a Polish name, and Arbeit Macht Frei is not a Polish phrase," Morawiecki said later on Twitter.

Yad Vashem issued a statement Saturday night opposing the Polish legislation and trying to put into historical context the "complex truth" regarding the Polish population's attitude toward its Jews.

"There is no doubt that the term 'Polish death camps' is a historical misrepresentation," the Yad Vashem memorial said. "However, restrictions on statements by scholars and others regarding the Polish people's direct or indirect complicity with the crimes committed on their land during the Holocaust are a serious distortion."

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Vanessa Gera contributed from Warsaw.

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Follow Heller at www.twitter.com/aronhellerap

News

Politicians in Greece, Macedonia meet over name issue

DEMETRIS NELLAS and KONSTANTIN TESTORIDES

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Associated Press•January 27, 2018

FILE - In this Sunday, Jan. 21, 2018 file photo, Protesters chant slogans during a rally against the use of the term "Macedonia" for the neighboring country's name, at the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki. A senior organizer of a rally planned in Greece's capital against a proposed compromise in a bitter name dispute with neighboring Macedonia says they hope to attract a million people to the march. Organizer Stergios Kalogiros told The Associated Press on Friday, Jan. 26 that he was hopeful the Feb. 4 rally in Athens would draw huge crowds after the event won endorsements this week from powerful religious and local government organizations. (AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos)

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Political leaders in both Greece and Macedonia met Saturday to discuss ways to resolve a longstanding dispute over the name of Greece's northern neighbor.

The meetings come days before United Nations envoy Matthew Nimetz will visit the countries to seek a compromise. Nimetz is expected in Greece on Monday and Tuesday before going to Macedonia the following two days.

Greece has disputed Macedonia's right to call itself by a name shared with its own northern province of Macedonia ever since the Republic of Macedonia became independent in 1991. It has blocked Macedonia's accession to NATO.

Greece contends that the use of the name, along with certain clauses in Macedonia's constitution, imply territorial designs on Greece, as well as the perceived appropriation of Greek symbols and names, such that of Alexander the Great, the most famous ruler of the Ancient Greek Kingdom of Macedonia.

Although recognized as the Republic of Macedonia by the majority of countries, Macedonia sits in the U.N. as The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in deference to Greek objections.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras met Saturday with the leaders of all opposition parliamentary parties except for far-right Golden Dawn. Although none gave him carte blanche for negotiations, he focused his criticism on opposition leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Tsipras described Mitsotakis as vacillating and too influenced by "extremists" within his party. The Greek premier said he is prepared to accept a "composite name ... with a geographical or historical reference" that would include the name Macedonia. This could mean a name such as Upper, or New, Macedonia.

"We must not listen to nationalist outbursts or fanatical shouts," Tsipras said in a televised speech after the meetings were over. He nonetheless acknowledged that "there is still a long way" before an agreement is achieved.

Besides the opposition, the leftist Tsipras has to contend with his own defense minister and leader of the right-wing, populist Independent Greeks, who has called for a referendum on the name issue and suggested the neighboring country call itself "Vardarska."

A protest against allowing the name "Macedonia" to be used by Greece's neighbor is scheduled for Feb. 4 in Athens. It follows a similar one in Thessaloniki, capital of Greece's Macedonia province, which, according to police, was attended by 90,000 people.

In Macedonia, a "coordination meeting" under President Gjorge Ivanov went late into the night Saturday and no statements have been issued. It was attended by Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov, and opposition leaders Hristijan Mickovski, the new leader of the conservative VMRO-DPMNE party, and Ali Ahmeti, head of the Albanian-minority Democratic Union for Integration.

There was a protest outside the meeting. The protesters object to Zaev's proposal to rename Macedonia's main highway and airport, both named for Alexander the Great, and demand termination of negotiations on the name issue.

News

Five killed in bomb attack at Colombia police station

AFP•January 27, 2018

A police source said 49 officers were at the site when the bomb exploded (AFP Photo/)

Bogota (AFP) - At least five police officers were killed and 41 others wounded Saturday when alleged drug traffickers detonated a bomb at a station in the northern city of Barranquilla, hours after a car explosion ripped through a security post near the border in neighboring Ecuador.

There was no apparent link between the two attacks, but they come as President Juan Manuel Santos seeks to end the armed conflict that has wracked Colombia for 50 years. Much of the violence has been linked to drug trafficking.

The bombing in Barranquilla was one of the deadliest on security personnel in recent years, casting a pall over preparations for the annual carnival, a major attraction in the bustling Caribbean port city.

Barranquilla police commander Mariano Botero said the bomb detonated as the officers gathered for morning formation.

A police source told AFP that 49 officers were at the site when the bomb exploded. Of those, five officers aged between 24 and 31 were killed and 41 were wounded.

A 31-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of carrying out the attack, according to Attorney General Nestor Martinez.

"We will charge (him) with five aggravated murders... attempted murder, terrorism and use of explosives," Martinez told a press conference.

- Retaliation -

Barranquilla Mayor Alejandro Char quickly blamed drug traffickers for the attack.

"I do not have the slightest doubt that this is a retaliation" for successful police action against drug traffickers, he told reporters.

Botero also suggested that the attack could be in revenge after a police crackdown on local drug traffickers.

Colombia is the world's top producer of cocaine, and criminal groups have flooded the country's main cities with drugs in a move known as "microtrafficking."

President Juan Manuel Santos blasted the "cowardly attack" on Twitter.

"We will not rest until we find those responsible, my solidarity is with the families of the victims and the wounded," Santos wrote.

Joining Santos was the presidential candidate of the FARC, the former guerrilla group which is now a leftist political party.

Rodrigo "Timochenko" Londono "vehemently" condemned the Barranquilla attack.

"All our solidarity is for the relatives of the slain police," he wrote on Twitter.

Santos reached a historic peace agreement with the FARC -- formerly known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- in November 2016. That led to the rebels' disarmament and transformation into a political party.

The president, who is set to step down in August, is hoping to reach a similar agreement with the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas.

- Ecuador attack -

In an apparently unrelated attack in Ecuador, not far from the country's border with Colombia, a car bomb destroyed the San Lorenzo police barracks around 1:30 am (0630 GMT).

President Lenin Moreno called it a "terrorist act linked to gangs of drug traffickers."

The blast slightly wounded 28 people -- both locals and police. Some 37 homes were destroyed, according to the Interior Ministry.

Moreno declared a state of emergency in the towns of Eloy Alfaro and San Lorenzo, home to some 56,000 people, "in order to boost security for citizens and the border."

Ecuador is considered a transit country for cocaine produced in Colombia and sold in Europe and the United States. Since Ecuador lacks major drug crops, authorities there fight against gangs that store narcotics.