In the last broadcast by Bogdan Rymanowski on Radio Zet, the erstwhile Prime Minister of Poland and the current president of the organization of European Conservatives and Reformers, Mateusz Morawiecki, spoke.
In the conversation there were clear declarations of support for Israel in the context of tensions in the mediate East.
The first question put the interviewer before a clear choice:
"Should Poland side with Israel in conflict with Iran? Yes or no?" Rymanowski asked at the beginning of the program.
Morawiecki left no doubt:
"Here in this situation we are surely facing a very serious threat from Iran. Therefore, Israel's overall efforts to destruct Iran's atomic capabilities are absolutely appropriate," the erstwhile Prime Minister replied.
“Is that so?” the leader asked.
“In this sense yes”, Morawiecki confirmed.
Thus, the chair of the ECE expressed his full knowing of Israeli preventive action against Iran's atomic infrastructure.
Morawiecki's declaration should not surprise. His political way is full of gestures and actions that attest to strong ties with the State of Israel and judaic environments.
In 2021, as Prime Minister, he promoted the thought of a joint gathering of the Polish Sejm and Israeli Kneset. Although it did not happen, the concept itself met with the support of any political and diplomatic circles.
His contacts with the Chabad Lubavich movement are besides important. In 2019, he lit a Khanukowa candle in Grzybowski Square in Warsaw, attending a ceremony with rabbis and diaspora members. Public statements and gestures indicate a desire to strengthen relations with judaic spiritual and cultural organizations.
In 2018 Mateusz Morawiecki at a controversial conference in Munich referred to his own judaic roots. The portal OKO.press recalled that in his speech he referred to his family:
“There were Holocaust victims in my family, and there were judaic rescuers. I besides have judaic aunts.” said Morawiecki, trying to build a communicative about the common destiny and Polish-Jewish solidarity.
Additional context for this study was introduced by writer Stanisław Michalkiewicz, who in his speech referred to the educational election of Morawiecki:
"Gossip walks, I think, just gossip. We were not told that the children of the Prime Minister are in this school, where only Hebrew is the language of the lecture," said Michalkiewicz, referring to the Lauder-Morash School Complex in Warsaw.
The school in question is the first judaic squad of schools in Poland created after 1989. It consists of kindergarten, simple school and advanced school. It is run by the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation. The current office are located at 10 Wawelberg Street in Warsaw Wola – in the restored pre-war old age home of the task by Henryk Stifelman.
Classes in the facility are held in Polish, but students besides learn Hebrew, judaic tradition and history. The school is officially secular and is besides available to children outside the judaic community, but retains a strong religious-cultural component. The patron of the advanced school was Zuzanna Ginchanka – a poet with judaic roots murdered by the Germans during the Holocaust.
Stanisław Michalkiewicz did not hide that the situation in which the children of the head of the Polish government are educated in a judaic institution opens “very many question marks”:
“If the children of the Prime Minister are acquainted with the Hebrew language and agree... excuse me, but the language of Polish death?” he said ironically.
All these facts build the image of Morawiecki as a policy that clearly focuses on close relations with Israel, both on a personal, symbolic and organization level. This approach raises different reactions – from designation to distrust – but cannot be ignored as part of his political and identity profile.
