Poland from Israel

In the spirit of Yom Kippur, a time when we ask forgiveness from our loved ones and friends and beg forgiveness from Hashem, we compiled a short list of newsworthy events in which one person, or country, might want to ask forgiveness from another.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a piece of legislation as outrageous as the Polish Holocaust Law, a bill that in its original form criminalized intimation of Polish guilt for the Holocaust and banned the use of the term “Polish death camps.”

True, the majority of Poles may not have collaborated with the Nazis, who occupied Poland from 1939 to 1945, but there were undoubtedly many incidents in which Poles took part in the slaughter. An estimated 200,000 Jews were murdered at the hands of their Polish neighbors in the Holocaust, the massacre at Jedwabne being the most notorious of its kind. Those pogroms weren’t the product of the Nazis’ Final Solution, but rather of a very old, entrenched anti-Semitism that waxed and waned over the centuries.

After Poland passed the law in February, a wave of condemnation ensued, especially from Israel and the United States. In June, the Polish government announced amendments to the bill, most principally one that decriminalized criticism of Polish state. So now, anyone claiming that the Polish people bear responsibility for the Nazis’ crimes will not be jailed. But according to Yad Vashem, the compromise that Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu reached with the Polish government still enables Poland to present a distorted narrative of the Holocaust.

Furthermore, according to Yad Vashem, other clauses in the amended, updated law make it possible for government organizations, like the Polish government’s Institute of National Remembrance, to lodge complaints against anyone “harming Poland’s good name” — a completely amorphous new legal standard. Unlike the criminal sanctions, complaints of this kind will be considered a civil legal matter, with perpetrators subject to fines. That’s significant when you realize that under Polish civil law, the onus to prove innocence is on the defendant, not the plaintiff. That means that defendants must pay for their own defense in court.

It’s a pity that in 2018, instead of learning from the lessons of the Holocaust, there are still people rewriting history for their own political-nationalistic purposes.

North Korea from Mike Pompeo

It’s anyone's guess whether the United States will convince North Korea to give up its nuclear program in exchange for a lifting of international sanctions. But for now it looks unlikely. The North Koreans, who sent President Trump an encouraging letter in March, have in recent weeks returned to their threatening rhetoric and halted the dismantling of their missile sites.

For North Korea, before they pay the ultimate price — dismantling nukes — they first want the prize: annulment of sanctions. The problem is, that’s not how business works, certainly not with Donald Trump. The upshot is that Kim Jong-un and company have wasted a lot of precious time for US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who’s been a frequent flyer on the Pyongyang-Seoul-Washington shuttle the last six months.

Donald Trump from John McCain

After Senator John McCain died on August 25, the White House flew its flag at half-staff, as is customary when a US senator passes away. But the next day, the White House raised the flag again, angering veteran’s groups who said the flag should be left at half-staff until the senator’s burial.

Observers instantly saw a political message: President Trump and Senator McCain had a rancorous relationship, and the president was making sure he had the last word.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, McCain, a former presidential candidate, did not endorse Trump. And Trump, for his part, had insulted McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, in a deeply personal way. “He’s not a war hero… I like people that weren’t captured,” Trump said in July 2015.

In fact, Trump’s remarks about McCain could be seen as the first instance in which the president used offensive, intemperate remarks about someone else, a habit that has continued for the last three years. Beyond Trump’s obligation to apologize to the McCain family, it seems that an apology is in order to everything McCain represents — namely a style of bipartisan politics that respects the political opponent and engages in fair debate.

Washington Journalists from Sarah Huckabee Sanders

The White House Correspondents Dinner is an annual opportunity for the Washington press corps to roast the political class, and in particular the occupant of the Oval Office.

Given his unpopularity with the press, President Trump hasn’t appeared at either of the two dinners during his tenure. This year, he sent his White House spokesperson, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, in his stead.

Sanders, the daughter of former Republican governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, endured a cruel ribbing from comedian Michelle Wolf, who made fun of Sanders’s weight and appearance in front of an audience of hundreds. The cruel tirade shocked even calloused journalists, most of whom agreed that a line of civility had been crossed.

Disappointingly, the day after the dinner, the president of the White House Correspondents Association, Margaret Talev, expressed “regret” that the program did not reflect well on the writers’ group but failed to offer an apology to Sanders. At a time when public trust of the press is at an all-time low, the skewering of Sanders, and the failure to apologize, doesn’t build much credibility.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 727)