On Tuesday, a far-right Polish lawmaker used a fire extinguisher to extinguish the candles in the Hanukkah menorah placed in the Parliament lobby, in a move that prompted his exit from Parliament by the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
“This should never have happened,” Simon Holonia told reporters after MP Gregors Braun was ejected for leaving the plenary session, adding that he would call for an investigation into the incident.
A nine-branched menorah lighting ceremony was held in the Polish Parliament to celebrate the Jewish Festival of Lights, and was attended by rabbis and a Jewish musical band.
Slavomir Kaminski/Agencja Wyborcza.pl/REUTERS
Polish channel TVN24 showed a video of Brown using a red fire extinguisher to extinguish candles, filling the area with smoke and fog generated by the device. Parliamentary proceedings were suspended.
“This should never have happened,” Holonia told reporters after Brown was ordered to leave the session, adding that he would call for an investigation into the lawmaker’s actions.
Newly elected Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk described what happened as a disgrace and said that such a thing should never be repeated. Tusk, a pro-European Union centrist, was elected on Monday, marking a coup for Poland after years of conservative leadership. Tusk delivered his inaugural speech to Parliament on Tuesday before Brown acted.
Brown, a member of the pro-Russian Confederation Party, had previously claimed that there was a conspiracy to turn Poland into a “Jewish state.”
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“It can’t happen again, it’s a shame,” Tusk said as he waited for parliament to approve his new pro-EU government, a vote that was postponed amid the chaos sparked by the incident, which was condemned by all parties. To the Brown Union.
“Shame. A member of the Polish parliament just did this. A few minutes after we celebrated Hanukkah there,” Israel’s ambassador to Poland, Yaakov Levin, said on social media, posting a video of the gesture.
After a delay of several hours, the new government of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk won a vote of confidence in parliament, the Associated Press reported. Tusk and his government are expected to be officially sworn in on Wednesday morning.
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