Poland Downgrades Mission to Israel, Says It Won’t Return Ambassador

Poland’s Foreign Ministry announced Thursday it will not name a new ambassador to Israel for the time being as relations sour over controversial new legislation, bringing the mission down to the level of Tel Aviv’s with Poland.

The traditionally sensitive bilateral relations soured in the summer after Poland adopted legislation seen as banning claims for restitution of some seized property, including that of Holocaust victims. Israel protested.

The ministry decided then that Poland’s ambassador, Marek Magierowski, was not to return to his Tel Aviv post after vacation. He has since been appointed to Washington.

Ministry spokesperson Lukasz Jasina told The Associated Press that “there are no plans at the moment to propose a new person for the position of ambassador” in Tel Aviv.

Israel’s mission to Poland is only at the charge d’affaires level, following earlier tensions, but the diplomat, Tal Ben-Ari Yaalon, was recalled to Israel during the summer spat. She is expected to return to Warsaw.

Bilateral relations, going back to 1948, were reestablished in 1990 – following the communist era – and have gone through various phases, recently souring after Poland adopted an administrative law setting a deadline on claims for restitution of seized real estate.

Source: Associated Press

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  • Sepp

    The sad joke here is that Israel wants the Poles who stole land from the Germans whom the ethnically cleansed in 1945-48 to choke up those said lands to some jew who got survived the “holocaust”

    • Stig

      Seppi: they want a cut of what your dear departed destroyed and the Poles rebuilt.
      Aus!

      • Sepp

        LOL. Poles love to pretend to forget that they invaded Ukraine, Lithuania and Czecho-Slovakia before they invaded Gleiwitz and started WWII…

  • Mr Reynard

    Oy Vey ! Those Anti-Semites Poles ….

  • XSFRGR

    “Say what you will of the Poles, but when given the chance they have never failed to put the Jew to the sword.” Adolf Hitler, speaking at the Bayreuth Circle.