“When I took my oath as Ambassador, I didn’t give up my ethics, values, or sense of right and wrong,” Georgette Mosbacher wrote on her Twitter feed.

By Ben Cohen, The Algemeiner

The U.S. ambassador in Warsaw has been facing a sustained rhetorical attack from Polish right-wing nationalists this week, with one televised missive falling upon classically anti-Semitic tropes in denouncing her for allegedly violating the country’s sovereignty.

Georgette Mosbacher — appointed as envoy to Poland by President Donald Trump in 2018 — has faced a deluge of criticism following a recent Twitter exchange in which she condemned a former Polish defense minister for a “disgusting and deplorable” statement made during the presidential election campaign that resulted in a narrow victory for the incumbent, Andrzej Duda, over the weekend.

The former minister, Antoni Macierewicz, who continues to sit in the Polish parliament, had posted a message on Twitter in which he rounded on the centrist Civic Platform party over its support for the rights of the LGBT+ community, as well as its defense of liberal private media outlets detested by Polish ultranationalists.

In vehement language, Macierewicz accused his political opponents of “LGBT and pedophilia propagation” and “demoralization of children and the family.” He charged that Civic Platform was “financing the persecution of Polish priests” accused of sexual abuse, as well as engaged in defending the “lies of TVN” — a private broadcaster that was purchased by American media giant Discovery Inc. two years ago.

In a response a few days later, Mosbacher retweeted Macierewicz’s post with a note castigating his “divisive and hateful commentary.”

“Any decent human being should reject this type of rhetoric!” Mosbacher wrote.

The reaction of Macierewicz’s allies was predictably furious. On Wednesday, Krzysztof Bosak, a far-right parliamentarian, led calls for Mosbacher to be declared “persona non grata” in Poland.

Separately, Robert Winnicki — another far-right MP with links to the Iranian regime — alleged that Mosbacher had violated diplomatic protocols by intervening on Polish domestic issues on nine different occasions.

On social media platforms, meanwhile, supporters of right-wing and nationalist groups echoed Winnicki’s insistence that the Polish government expel Mosbacher, with many posts demanding that she “go home!”

One of the more virulent attacks on Mosbacher was broadcast on Tuesday, replete with anti-Semitic tropes.

In a televised commentary, far-right journalist Tomasz Sommer assailed Mosbacher using crudely anti-Semitic and sexist terminology.

Discussing the ambassador’s personal life, Sommer remarked that her second husband was a Polish-born Jew who had worked with “Jewish movie companies in the U.S.” before he purchased “a company named Fabergé from another Jew who was from Bialystok.”

Sommer went on to claim that Mosbacher was descended from a family of German Jews who had converted to Protestant Christianity.

“They baptized themselves as Protestants; there are many baptized Jews among Protestants,” he said.

Turning to Mosbacher’s support for restitution of property belonging to the three million Polish Jews exterminated during the Nazi Holocaust, Sommer commented that the ambassador’s stance had been inspired by her being divorced on three different occasions.

“The JUST Act is meant to squeeze money out of Poland just like she got money from her divorces,” Sommer asserted, in a reference to legislation passed by the US Congress which requires the State Department to monitor compliance with Holocaust-era compensation by nearly 50 countries, including Poland.

For her part, Mosbacher remained defiant on Wednesday.

“When I took my oath as Ambassador, I didn’t give up my ethics, values, or sense of right and wrong,” she wrote on her Twitter feed. “When I see history being distorted or interpreted for malign reasons, I speak out regardless of being Ambassador or not.”

In her two years in Poland, Mosbacher has confounded expectations that she would avoid political controversies, not least because of President Trump’s admiration for Duda’s right-wing government.

Instead, she has crossed swords with local politicians on a range of issues, becoming a hate figure for the vocal Polish far right and symbolizing its obsession with supposed “Jewish” designs against the country.

When Mosbacher offered her festive greetings for the Jewish holiday of Passover in April 2019, a wave of anti-Semitic invective quickly followed.

“Christ also died for you, traitorous Jews,” asserted one reply to Mosbacher’s wish for a “peaceful, joyful” Passover.

The post ‘Go home!’: US ambassador to Warsaw draws anti-Semitic fury from Polish far right appeared first on World Israel News.

A lawmaker with Poland’s ruling right-wing party called the American ambassador’s Passover greeting a “provocation.”

By Associated Press

The U.S. ambassador to Poland wished Jews a happy Passover in Polish, and the reaction has been a wave of angry comments on Twitter.

(Twitter)

Ambassador Georgette Mosbacher also wished Poles a happy Easter on Sunday. But by then she was accused of offending the country with her Passover tweet and reminded that she is serving in a mostly Roman Catholic country.

Krystyna Pawlowicz, a lawmaker with Poland’s ruling right-wing party, called it a “provocation.”

Robert Bakiewicz, a far-right activist who organizes a yearly Independence Day march that government leaders joined last year, said “Christ died and was resurrected also for you, pagans and traitorous Jews.”

Some came to Mosbacher’s defense, recalling that Poland also has a small Jewish population. Poland was home to Europe’s largest Jewish population before the Holocaust.

The post Passover wishes from US envoy in Poland met with anger, anti-Semitism appeared first on World Israel News.

By World Israel News Staff

U.S. Ambassador to Poland Georgette Mosbacher wrote on her Polish-language Twitter account that comments made by Jerusalem’s acting foreign minister, Yisrael Katz, were “offensive” and out of place between such “close allies as Poland and Israel.”

Her rebuke came in the wake of Katz’s remark Sunday, in an Israeli television interview, that the Poles “suckle anti-Semitism with their mother’s milk.” The discussion was about whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Warsaw last week, said that “Poles” or “Poland” had collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Following Katz’s faux pas, Poland canceled its participation in a V4 summit in Israel this week. Instead, the leaders of the other Visegrad countries — Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic — attended individual, bilateral talks with Netanyahu.

“I just felt that two strong allies like Israel and Poland, of course they are strong allies of the United States, shouldn’t be using that kind of rhetoric. We are too important to each other not to work these things out,” Mosbacher told reporters, calling on Israel to apologize.

Mosbacher herself created controversy in June when she attributed the rise of anti-Semitism in eastern Europe to Poland’s new Holocaust law, which criminalizes blaming Poland for Nazi war crimes committed on Polish soil. Nominated by President Donald Trump, she made the comment during a nomination hearing before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

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