Jo Harper<\/p>\n
14 April 2026\u2022Update: 14 April 2026<\/p>\n
Far-right Polish lawmaker Grzegorz Braun sparked outrage in the Polish parliament in Warsaw on Tuesday after displaying an Israeli flag in which the Star of David had been replaced with a Nazi swastika and accusing Israel of becoming the \u201cnew Third Reich\u201d for carrying out genocide in Gaza, Polish media reported.<\/p>\n
Braun held up the altered flag during a speech in the Sejm — Poland\u2019s lower house of parliament — where he attacked the Israeli government and called for Poland to sever ties with Israel. \u201cThe state of Israel has become the new Third Reich,\u201d he proclaimed, accusing the nation of committing crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.<\/p>\n
The incident prompted immediate protests from other lawmakers in the chamber, with several shouting \u201cscandal\u201d and demanding that Braun leave the podium. Braun has repeatedly used parliamentary appearances to make anti-Israel and anti-Semitic statements since the start of the Gaza war. He previously disrupted a Hanukkah ceremony in parliament with a fire extinguisher and earlier this year in the European Parliament, interrupted a Holocaust memorial silence to speak about what he called the \u201cJewish genocide in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk condemned the display, saying on social media that \u201cthere is no place in Polish public life for anti-Semitism, hate or the desecration of the memory of the victims of Nazi crimes.\u201d Parliamentary speaker Szymon Holownia said he had instructed parliamentary lawyers to examine whether Braun\u2019s remarks and the altered flag violated Polish law.<\/p>\n
Members of the governing coalition and opposition alike denounced Braun\u2019s actions. Krzysztof Gawkowski described the speech as \u201cpure anti-Semitism dressed up as political commentary,\u201d while opposition lawmaker Michal Szczerba said Braun had \u201ccrossed every possible line.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Israeli embassy in Warsaw said it was \u201cappalled\u201d by the incident and called on Polish authorities to respond firmly. In a statement, the embassy said that equating the Israeli flag with Nazi symbolism was \u201can outrageous distortion of history and an insult to the victims of the Holocaust.\u201d<\/p>\n
The episode comes amid already strained debate in Poland over the war in Gaza and over the country\u2019s wartime memory. The Polish government has always been particularly sensitive to Nazi comparisons and to suggestions that Poland or Poles shared responsibility for the Holocaust. That sensitivity has repeatedly collided with Braun\u2019s provocative rhetoric, which has increasingly focused on Israel and Jews.<\/p>\n
Braun, the leader of the far-right Confederation of the Polish Crown, is already facing possible criminal charges over earlier incidents, including his use of a fire extinguisher to put out Hanukkah candles in parliament in December, 2023. Prosecutors are also investigating other statements Braun has made in reference to Jews and the Holocaust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jo Harper 14 April 2026\u2022Update: 14 April 2026 Far-right Polish lawmaker Grzegorz Braun sparked outrage in the Polish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43,180804],"class_list":["post-391741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-sitekeywords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}