An Absence at Auschwitz

The word is hard to find for the latest news out of Poland, which is inviting world leaders to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the labor and death camp where more than one million people perished, something like nine in ten of them Jews. All are welcome, except for — wait for it — the elected leader of the Jewish state, who is instead threatened with arrest if he steps foot on Polish soil to pay homage to those who perished.That threat came without Prime Minister Netanyahu even asking, amid a war Israel is fighting against, among others, Palestinian Arabs whose World War II era leader sided with Hitler. Yet a Polish deputy foreign minister declared, according to the Polish-language newspaper Rzeczpospolita, that if Mr. Netanyahu showed up he would be arrested. This is supposedly its obligation to the International Criminal Court. As Rzeczpospolita reports, the deputy foreign minister, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, who is charged with organizing the ceremony, claims that Poland has no choice. At a site of mass murder of the Jews, Warsaw must slap the handcuffs on Mr. Netnayahu to obey a warrant from the Hague. Arresting a Jew at Auschwitz would make a scene, but, Mr. Bartoszewski claims, “we are obliged to respect the provisions of the International Criminal Court.”Obliged? Says who? The rules of the ICC vary from one of its members to another. The Hague is not Sinai. Some countries even change their stance mid-course. Last month the ICC judges agreed with their top prosecutor, Karim Khan, and issued arrest warrants against Mr. Netanayahu and the former defense minister, Yoav Gallant. One ICC member, France, immediately announced it would execute the arrests. Yet, a week later, Paris demurred. A country “cannot be required to act inconsistently with its obligations under international law with respect to the immunities of states not party to the ICC,” the French foreign ministry said in a statement. As Israel noted in a recent filing at the Hague, it is not a party to the Rome Statute that established the criminal court, so the ICC has no jurisdiction over its citizens. Why would Poland disagree on such a fundamental and commonsense rule?The answer is rooted less in jurisprudence than in geopolitics. President Macron was eager last month to get credit for arranging a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah. Israel argued that France couldn’t be an honest broker if it vows to arrest Mr. Netanayahu. America agreed. So Paris said it wouldn’t arrest him. Poland is eager to arrest President Putin of its rival Russia, who is wanted by the ICC. So to be consistent, it must also arrest the Israeli leader. Then again, too, there might be other considerations. As our Benny Avni reports, Warsaw’s relations with Jerusalem are marred by its effort to suppress claims of Polish complicity in the Holocaust. Under a new law, Poland could imprison anyone saying that some Poles abetted the Nazi murder machine. Calling Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and the like “Polish death camps” is forbidden. Israel’s presence at the January event might touch some raw nerves. All of which underlines the capricious nature of what is called international jurisprudence. Kafkaesque rules allow a country that is fighting Iran proxies who commit crimes against humanity to be accused of committing such crimes. “Outrageous” was President Biden’s reaction to Bibi’s arrest warrant. President Trump now has a chance to revive sanctions on the ICC and punish countries, like Poland, who are all too eager to cooperate with the Hague. The crimes at Auschwitz — and other camps, ghettos, and forests throughout Poland and Europe — are what led a Polish Jew, Raphael Lemkin, to coin the term “genocide.” That word is now used as a weapon against the country that arose from Auschwitz’s ashes with the aim of redemption in Zion. A gathering of leaders at Auschwitz will be meaningless without, in Benjamin Netanyahu, the one world leader with the clearest standing to speak there.

An Absence at Auschwitz

An Absence at Auschwitz

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