Around a thousand people attended a public gathering in Warsaw on Sunday to express solidarity with Israel and the victims of terror. A symbolic table covered with a white tablecloth and surrounded by empty chairs was set up between the monument of the Ghetto Heroes and the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, on which boards were placed with photographs and names of Jews kidnapped during the Hamas attack on Israel.

Gathered around the table, demonstrators brought several hundred Israeli flags. The flags of Poland, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Spain were also visible. Participants also held banners with messages such as “More Hummus less Hamas” and “We demand the expulsion of Hamas supporters from Poland”.

Israeli Ambassador to Poland Yaakov Livne announced at the gathering that Israel will eliminate Hamas just as the world eliminated Nazi Germany and ISIS.

“When Hamas is destroyed, the world will become more secure, and the people of Gaza will be freed from a murderous dictatorship. We will chase after each and every one of these Nazi jihadists. Thank you, dear friends, for your support. Together we will prevail”, said the ambassador.

Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Jaroslaw Sellin, who was present at the gathering, said that the day of the attack is another tragic date in the history of the Jewish people,

“One thousand four hundred people murdered, more than three thousand wounded, about two hundred and thirty kidnapped, whose beautiful faces we see today around this table set on the square between the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes and the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. They died simply because they were Jews. A child, a woman, an old man, a man, it didn’t matter for the kidnappers,” said the deputy head of the Ministry of Culture.

After the speeches, a list of more than 200 Israelis kidnapped by Hamas was read out. A prayer for the hostages and the missing was said by the rabbis, the chairman of Chabad Lubavitch Poland, Rabbi Shalom Dov Ber Stambler and his son Joel read Psalm 122, after which Rabbi Stambler blew the shofar.

Arkadiusz Slomczynski