Image Credit: WOJTEK RADWANSKI / Contributor / Getty 
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk took to X over the weekend, posting that Poland does indeed support Israel in the fight against Islamic terrorism, but added that Poland “will never be on the side of politicians whose actions lead to hunger and the death of mothers and children.”
“This must be obvious to the nations that went through the hell of World War II together,” the Polish prime minister emphasized.
In a terse response, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs slammed the “unacceptable reference” made by Tusk.
“Unfortunately, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk is linking his timely condemnation of Hamas with an unacceptable reference to politicians, accompanied by a reminder of the horrible days of World War II,“ they responded in a repost of Tusk’s statement.
Unfortunately, Poland Prime Minister @donaldtusk is linking his timely condemnation of Hamas with an unacceptable reference to politicians, accompanied by a reminder of the horrible days of World War II. The Prime Minister of Poland should remember the lesson of “Never Again.”… pic.twitter.com/43atQZdT9Z
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) August 4, 2025
Advising Tusk to recall the slogan “Never Again,” a vow by Jews to prevent another genocide, they added, ”Never Again, Prime Minister Tusk, applies to our era’s new Nazis and their collaborators, Hamas. Israel acts within international law.”
Assuming Tusk would respond the same way if threatened, the ministry stated: “When Poland is threatened, you don’t take risks either.”
Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski also spoke out on the matter, calling on Israel to abide by international law. In an excerpt from an interview with Onet.pl posted on X, Sikorski said: “Starving children in Gaza do not know what Hamas is. Israel, even when acting in self-defense, is not exempt from respecting international law.
American diplomat Tom Rose, who is also U.S. President Trump’s nominee for the post of ambassador to Poland, in turn, lashed out at the foreign minister.
“History offers no precedent where a terrorist group wages war for the explicit annihilation of a sovereign state, embeds itself among civilians, and then relies on that very state to supply it with food, water, and fuel,” he wrote.
“And yet, that is exactly what Israel has done—often under duress, often at great cost and risk to its own soldiers, and almost always without reciprocity.”
Dismissing the labelling of Israel as a “tyrant” and stating that it is “acting well within the bounds of international law,” Rose added that Israel abides by a moral code that has led it to provide “more humanitarian aid to its mortal enemy than any combatant in the history of warfare—and it does so under tremendous pressure and at great risk to its own flesh and blood.”
He then asked if Ukraine would be expected to do the same: “Should Ukraine send convoys of aid while under fire to feed Russian civilians in occupied Donbas or Crimea? Would Poland? These would be absurd demands — for Poland, for Ukraine, for any country fighting a defensive war, yet Israel faces them daily.”
