Why did Israelis build its national identity on the suffering of Poland and its people during WWII and then often start hating Poland for that?
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1tfpp1q
Posted by jamcer
Why did Israelis build its national identity on the suffering of Poland and its people during WWII and then often start hating Poland for that?
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1tfpp1q
Posted by jamcer
32 Comments
Żyto be like that bibi
btw be careful about posting commens about israelis because whatever you wrote, you’ll get banned from reddit directly. i guess reddit was promised to them 3000 years ago as well lol
I don’t think Israelis built their national identity on suffering of Poland. The ones who do reference the Holocaust are not all of Polish origin either.
As for the dislike among the Israelis towards Poland, there are some valid reasons for it, like from people who were forced out by the government or are descendants of people who were attacked when they tried to go back to their house after the war, victims of post-war pogroms etc. And then there’s the Israeli education system and politicians who exaggerate the Polish involvement in the Holocaust.
It was promised to them 3000 years ago I guess
I asked around and according to my Israelis friends this sentence is entirely wrong.
It didn’t. Israel was founded as a state on the principle of creating a safe place for Jews to escape to during the pogroms. Many of these early Jews lived in places across Eastern Europe (not just Poland).
What you are thinking of is that Israel memorializes the Holocaust. The reality is many people living in Israel are current or descendant of survivors of ethnic cleansing and genocide, including the Holocaust. It would be weird for a country formed by refugees to not make that story part of their national identity.
Additionally, Jews do not see themselves as part of the „murdered Polish collective”. Polish people reframe it in this way to sidestep an acknowledgement of their complicity in the Holocaust. It is true that out of all nations occupied by Germany, Poland fought the hardest against the occupiers. However, it is also true that many Poles were incredibly active and willing participants in genocide against their Jewish communities.
The part about Israel hating Poland is just absurd. Israelis are fond of Poles and Poland participates in cooperative programs with Israel regarding Holocaust education. Poland is also a huge vacation spot for Israelis.
Post feels like ragebait.
Basically Israel propaganda that holocaust and generaly Nazi persecution was only aimed at them, while others either stood idle or helped the nazis.
Professional victimhood.
The worst mistake was letting them take all that away for themselves. 6 million polish citizens died, including 3 million polish jews. It should’ve been that right from the start. These “jews” didn’t exist in a void, they were Polish citizens. Instead, Israel took the whole narrative, all the victims and made it appear as if they were the sole victims of ww2. Now they use it both as propaganda (polish death camps) and justification/ victim card whenever they invade their neighbours or cause an uproar due to another news coming from gaza.
Why do you ask on r/poland? Ask on r/israel. There probably they will tell you that Polish people where worst than the nazis, no matter the evidence and no matter how many awards did Israel give to Polish people after the war.
Hi! As an Ashkenazi Jew with polish ancestry (from America, not Israel) I think the Israeli pov rests on two things: how it treats Polish/Eastern European Jews and how it treats Polish/Eastern European non-Jews.
Zionism rests on the theory that the Jews in Poland and Eastern Europe who suffered and died during WWII deserved it for their backwardsness. At the same time Zionism uses this suffering to justify itself seeing itself as the only defense against something like WWII happening again… which in this day and age is ironic.
They also have this bunker mentality that everyone outside of Israel hates them and wants them to die. This is based, in my opinion, in unprocessed trauma. For example American Jews with Polish ancestry have a much healthier relationship to Poland and our historical countrymen.
That being said: Israelis don’t see Polish Jews and Polish non-Jews as the same people. They feel that Polish non-Jews were just as bad as the Nazis which is based in willful ignorance about how much Poland suffered in WWII. So they feel that they’re building their National identity on the suffering of “Jews in Poland” rather than on the suffering of Poland. They hate Poles bc they view the Poles as being the perpetrators of that violence.
Their view is contradictory from multiple angles and I think that’s due to the fact that many modern Israelis don’t really have a solid understanding of WWII.
We also need to remember that a lot of early Israelis had polish ancestry, now not so much. If we think of WWII as an event like the break up of Yugoslavia we can imagine that these two groups once shared a national identity but are now divided by ethnic tensions and a history of conflict.
I hope this helps!!
Here’s a hypothetical. When a group’s worldview is rooted in inherent dominance, members are often conditioned from birth to view all others as lesser. This creates a deeply ingrained dynamic where any gesture of goodwill is actively resisted or twisted, and hostility remains fixed. Furthermore, this type of superiority complex frequently leads individuals to project their own negative traits and harmful behaviors onto the very groups they marginalize. That’s the scariest part. Everything you might get accused of, is because they are doing or thinking of it themselves, lol.
> the suffering of Poland and its people
What do you mean by that?
Let me give you a perspective that will show you the difference between polish Pole and polish Jew experience of war.
Native Poles – about 10% murdered or dead during war
polish Jews – over 90% murdered. there are areas where one in 100, or in 1000 survived. Everybody else – gone.
So I don’t think they built it on “suffering of Poland”
Because they care more about money than historical truth, and at the same time they teach their children a history full of anti-Polish propaganda.
When I read on their Reddit that the camps were Polish, I decided there was no point in even talking to them. Literally no other country, not even Germany, repeats this historical nonsense, only Israel.
Fuck them. We’re far away enought from them that we simply don’t have to keep diplomatic contacts. Nothing is mandatory.
Because they hate us
As a Pole myself I hate hipocrites whatever their nationality.
Cos buisness with Germany suits them better, than buisness with Poland. ‘Tis why we have mythical Nazis instead of Germans. Also Polish people portrayed as murderers fit that narration better. It does not matter, that in occupied Poland helping Jews was punnished by death, and many Poles helped them anyway. It does not matter, that Polish Underground Stare dedicated a whole department to help Jews. It does not matter, that “Rightous Among The Nations” lists over 7K Poles, which is the highest ammount of all countries. It does not matter, ‘cos it does not fit the narrative, and buisness is buisness…
You say that like it wasnt built on the suffering of Jews.
Poles talk about Jews way more than Jews talk about Poles.
You are accusing Jews of being anti-Pole when Poles were, are, and continue to be incredibly antisemitic.
One thing I never wondered is why so many Poles I knew hated Jews. It’s sad, but based on the history I get it. Now here I am, not hating Jews, but certainly hating on Israel lol.
Mnie w szkole uczyli, że 271k żydów zgineło w 2 wojnie i nauczyciele potwierdzali to różnymi relacjami francuskich i brytyjskich dziennikarzy i naukowców
na przyszłość dostaliśmy nauczkę komu nie pomagać
They didn’t. Poles just can’t stop blaming Jews for situations caused by Germans.
Talk about victim mentality …
That reminds me, Among Neighbors is finally streaming in the US!
The call themselves “holy nation” but it’s quite the opposite.
[ Removed by Reddit ]
What’s most amusing to me is that for 99.9% of my life, I didn’t think about Israel at all. Of course, I was learning about World War II and the Holocaust, how Israel was founded, but I was completely uninterested in what contemporary Israelis thought about Poles because it was a completely different part of the world and a completely different time.
I knew they have a rich, prosperous country and a reliable army, and Tel Aviv offered great holidays, and that was the end of my need to delve into what Israelis are doing these days.
But I was shocked when I heard from Poles on pilgrimage to the Holy Land that they were spat on by people there for speaking Polish as tourists. That was about five years ago. I couldn’t understand why. So, I read some posts on Israeli Reddit, and my information bubble burst. I was shocked by the mount of hatred towards Poles of my generation they expressed.
We are so focused with earning money for our own apartment or dealing with inflation, pandemics, and other issues that we even haven’t had a time, desire, or need to think about Israel or the Israelis. And they hate people who don’t seriously think about them at all. It’s sick. Or rather, we didn’t, because since the genocide in Gaza, we read about this nation with shock on our faces. Israelis should have a national psychological therapy for persecution mania, for real.
They ecen spread propaganda, that nazis were worse than soviets, to get all the glory from being genocided.
I don’t think it’s particularly complex – the primary raison d’etre for Israel is the Holocaust. For over 50 years, other arguments – economic advancement of the Mandate of Palestine, mainly – had fallen among thorns. If it had become common knowledge that the Holocaust was a part of the plan that included getting the world rid of all “undesirables” (Roma people, Slavs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals…), its impact wouldn’t have been enough for the Resolution 181.
Besides, survivorship bias. Many Jews who escaped Poland for Israel genuinely did experience antisemitism (which was a real problem in interwar Poland), plus the fact that Poland was the Holocaust’s main stage didn’t help at all. There was a common sentiment that had only the local non-Jewish population rebelled, the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened. Which is, of course, false because *they did rebel* – this is why the punishment for hiding and helping Jews was far more severe than elsewhere in Europe.
We know why. The same reason the frog trusted the scorpion.
Because it has nothing to do with the suffering of Poland, only the suffering in Poland.
We didn’t. I guess someone had a salty Eurovision watch party yesterday😂 your viewers have Israel 12 points btw. So funny… looking at this sub – it seems we (Israelis) live rent free inside some people’s heads. Which is funny, cause this online hate doesn’t represent the Polish people in the slightest. Everyone I met in Poland through past 15 years was absolutely adequate, polite and really couldn’t give a damn about all that stupid hoop jumping to invent new reasons to hate Jews. 🤔
what an-antisemitic post