Poland’s new envoy rejects Gaza genocide claims, says democracies must back Israel
In first interview with Israeli outlet, former spy chief Maciej Hunia says allied nations’ fights over Holocaust history are in the past
Poland’s new envoy to Israel says he agrees with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel is fighting the free world’s battle in its campaigns against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.
“The entire democratic world should — must — support Israel in its fight against terrorists,” Maciej Hunia told The Times of Israel on Wednesday, in his first interview with an Israeli publication.
Hunia also rejects accusations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
“Genocide is a crime committed with willingness to commit it,” said Hunia, a 63-year-old former top intelligence official who arrived in Israel the day before Yom Kippur three weeks ago to represent one of the most pro-Israel countries in Europe, filling a post that had been empty for three years.
“War is a brutal thing always,” said Hunia. “Not very nice. And there are also collateral damages when you struggle. So I’m absolutely sure that the Israeli army is not planning out operations which are going to kill innocent people.”
In his July confirmation hearing in Poland’s lower house of parliament, Hunia expressed a similar position: “Genocide – I would be far from using this word. Unfortunately, military operations come together with casualties among uninvolved civilians. This also applied to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“If you use airplanes against terrorists in urban areas, there must be collateral damage,” he told The Times of Israel.
On Monday, South Africa filed with the International Court of Justice its full submission alleging that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza during its ongoing military operation against terror group Hamas, claiming that Israel has failed to abide by numerous clauses of the genocide convention and its international obligations.
Israel utterly rejects allegations of genocide in the war that began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas led a devastating cross-border assault, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
For his part, Hunia said: “I know that you want to protect your soldiers. It’s an absolute priority for everyone. But we should think also about the civilians who are on the other side of the conflict.”
Hunia served as head of Poland’s military intelligence, then directed its Foreign Intelligence Agency. He said he had been to Israel “many times” in his intelligence roles, but would not expand on the visits. “This issue cannot be discussed.”
The diplomat is not officially serving as ambassador, as he has not yet submitted his letter of credence to President Isaac Herzog: An extended political fight between Polish President Andrzej Duda and the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk has kept dozens of heads of missions unable to assume the title of ambassador.
“It is our internal problem,” he explained. “We have, currently, Poland’s president from one political camp and prime minister from another political camp. That’s all I can say on this issue.”
While Hunia believes Israel is representing the free world, he argued that the same logic should apply to Jerusalem’s stance on Ukraine: “Ukraine is also fighting for democracy. And all democratic countries should be united and work together against threats coming from terrorist organizations, coming from Russia. The position should be absolutely the same.”
Jerusalem has been castigated over its decision to continue to engage with Moscow after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, and its refusal to provide military aid to Kyiv. Israel has long maintained that it needs to keep up contact with Moscow in order to coordinate activity in Syria, and has sent repeated waves of medical and other civil assistance to Ukraine since the war began in 2022.
At the same time, Israel’s relations with Russia have deteriorated amid even the limited support it has provided Ukraine, and as Moscow has grown increasingly close to Iran during the war.
Hunia explained that his military and intelligence background is a key reason for his appointment to Israel.
“I started serving here in Israel in a specific time because there is a conflict in Gaza, Hezbollah, Iran,” he said. “We are involved in Ukraine, and Israel is mainly focused on security issues. Our government is also involved and focused on what’s going on in Ukraine.”
Though relations between the two Eastern European countries have been turbulent, Poland has been one of Ukraine’s most ardent backers against Russia. Leaders in Warsaw see the Russian threat as existential.
Poland has been using Israeli Spike anti-tank missiles for years, and now produces them domestically. The advanced weapons are sure to be a central element of Warsaw’s ability to combat Russian armored attacks in any potential war.
Poland and Israel also cooperate closely on counterterrorism. Hunia noted that components of the bomb used in a deadly 2012 terrorist attack on Israelis in the Bulgarian resort town of Burgas were found to have originated in Poland.
Bright chapters, dark times
Despite the sympathy and cooperation on security issues, bilateral ties under the previous Polish government had become strained in recent years by fights over Poles’ treatment of Jewish citizens during the Holocaust.
At the same time, many of those disagreements were solved under the right-wing government, which was replaced in December of last year.
Poland was the first country invaded and occupied by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s regime and never had a collaborationist government. Members of Poland’s resistance and government-in-exile struggled to warn the world about the mass killing of Jews, and thousands of Poles risked their lives to help Jews.
However, Holocaust researchers have also collected ample evidence of Polish people who murdered Jews who were fleeing the Nazis, and Polish blackmailers who preyed on helpless Jews for financial gain.
“What we know from the research that’s been going on since the beginning of the 21st century is that for Jews, especially, who tried to flee into the countryside and for more provincial areas, that the Nazis engaged in hunting out the Jews,” said Robert Rozett, senior historian at the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem.
“And in hunting out the Jews, they often employed Poles, either people from the villages, or they would approach Polish village elders to ask them to round up Jews. And some of this was done under duress, and some of this was done willingly, and everything in between.”
Six million Jews, including nearly all of Poland’s roughly 3 million Jews, were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust, and major Nazi death camps were located in Poland.
“There were Poles who betrayed Jews,” Hunia acknowledged. “There were Poles who saved Jews, and I’m very proud of Poles who saved Jews. I’m ashamed of Poles who betrayed Jews.”
Hunia stressed that there were also Polish underground leaders betrayed by other Poles, including the leader of the resistance Home Army Stefan Rowecki.
“No society is built just of angels,” Hunia said.
Bilateral relations with Israel deteriorated in 2018, after Poland passed legislation that outlawed blaming the Polish nation for the Holocaust, amid what critics said was a wider effort to paper over Polish complicity with Nazi crimes. Then-foreign minister Yair Lapid called the law antisemitic, touching off a diplomatic row.
No society is built just of angels.
Poland’s previous right-wing government was also widely accused of cracking down on academic voices that deviated from the government’s stance on the Polish experience in World War II.
Polish nationalists don’t deny that some Poles preyed on their Jewish compatriots, but say these cases shouldn’t lead to generalizations about society at large. They fear scholarship on Poles who betrayed Jews is distorting a history of heroism by Poles who resisted the Germans. And they argue it risks unfairly shifting the responsibility of the German crimes onto Poles.
“I’m a historian,” Hunia told The Times of Israel. “My approach is that every historian has a right to interpretation of the facts, if he is using fact as a beginning of discussion. Interpretation is a different issue.
“Every family has its own experiences, has its own story. I think it was, it is, and it will be discussed among historians. There will be different opinions, but I don’t think that it should be a political issue.
“Polish history is so rich,” he continued. “We have very bright chapters in our history, but we also have dark times in our history. But absolutely, we can cope with it.”
The two erstwhile allies also saw a diplomatic spat sparked over Holocaust restitution in 2021, when Poland’s legislature passed a law effectively cutting off any future restitution to the heirs of property seized by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Israel recalled its envoy to Warsaw for consultations the following month. Lapid advised Poland’s ambassador to Israel to remain on vacation in his homeland, and instructed Israel’s new ambassador to Poland, Ya’acov Livne, to remain in Israel.
Since then, the two sides slowly de-escalated the tensions, though Poland never rescinded the law. Livne took up his post in Warsaw in February 2022 to coordinate Israeli efforts to extract citizens from Ukraine and to provide aid to Kyiv.
Despite promises that year from Duda to return Poland’s envoy to Israel, he did not do so until Hunia arrived this month.
The countries were also locked in conflict over educational Holocaust trips for Israeli teens for several years. The Foreign Ministry previously said the Polish government was trying to control the Holocaust studies curriculum taught to the students.
The two countries signed an agreement resolving the issues around the Holocaust trips in early 2023.
Other tensions have shaken the relationship more recently. Poland’s public prosecutor is still investigating the death of Polish World Central Kitchen aid worker Damian Sobol, killed in an IDF strike in Gaza in April.
After the attack, Livne caused outrage in Poland after he wrote on social media platform X that the “extreme right and left” in Poland were accusing Israel of intentional murder, adding that “antisemites will always remain antisemites.”
The disagreements of recent years “are totally behind us,” Hunia insisted in the interview.
He said Poland would now try to promote “reasonable” positions in the European Union, “with the provision that Israel has a right to do everything in order to secure its own existence, to deliver security for Israeli citizens in Israel and abroad.”
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