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Yad Vashem denounces Poland’s demanded additions to Israeli student trips as ‘inappropriate’
(JTA) — When Israel and Poland agreed to resume Israeli youth trips to Polish Holocaust sites last month, their agreement stipulated that new sites be added to the students’ itineraries, including some that document Nazi crimes against non-Jewish Poles. Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and history authority, is now calling those additions “inappropriate” and “problematic.”
In statements to Haaretz published on Monday, leading historians condemned the development, arguing that the new trip rules advance what they call Poland’s track record of obscuring its Holocaust record.
The new list of required sites for students to see are “dubious at best and controversial at worst,” said Havi Dreifuss, a Tel Aviv University history professor affiliated with Yad Vashem. She added that some of the sites “ignore documented aspects of Poles’ involvement in the murder of Jews,” or even “glorify Poles who were involved up to their necks in the murder of Jews.”
“What you have there is the ‘Polish wish-list’ of where Israeli youth should go,” said Jan Grabowski, a professor who studies Polish-Jewish Holocaust history and has been prosecuted in Poland over some of his research conclusions. “It reads like a Holocaust denier’s dream.”
Youth trips to Holocaust sites in Poland have long been part of a longstanding educational program in Israel. They were suspended last year amid a series of diplomatic spats between Poland and Israel fueled mostly by a push by Poland’s right-wing government to highlight German crimes against Poles during World War II. Historians around the world have argued that the campaign — which included multiple laws that drew harsh responses from Jerusalem — has also sought to downplay Polish crimes against local Jews before, during and after the Holocaust.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was critical of those recent Polish laws, but since assembling the most right-wing government in Israel’s history earlier this year, lawmakers have pushed for renewing ties. After meeting with his Polish counterpart last month, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen declared that the countries’ “crisis” in relations was over. Cohen and Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau signed an agreement stating that Israeli youth trips to Holocaust sites in Poland would resume, pending approval in the Knesset, or Israel’s parliament. Poland also agreed to reinstate its ambassador to Israel.
Soon after the signing, Poland’s deputy foreign minister noted in a statement that Israeli students would learn on the trips “what [Poland] as a country and as a nation have been through and what we have survived.” The Israeli students will also meet with Polish youths, Paweł Jabłoński added, “to combat negative stereotypes that exist in Israel regarding Poland.”
Now details are being released to the public, Haaretz reported. In addition to touring Jewish-specific sites, students will also be required to visit at least one site per trip related to “other crimes of World War II,” which include museums focused on Nazi crimes against non-Jewish Poles.
Included in the list of additional sites is the Markowa Ulma-Family Museum of Poles Who Saved Jews in World War II —which tells the story of a Polish family who were killed for hiding eight Jews in their house. Other museums that highlight the “forsaken” or “doomed” Polish soldiers who rebelled against Communist forces in the aftermath of the war. Grabowski said that many of those soldiers were “ruthless murderers of Jews during and after the war.”
Israel’s education ministry and Yad Vashem both said that they have not agreed to modify the trips.
“Every tour that took place in the past can take place exactly as it was and with no changes in the future. The Poles have asked to add sites to the list, yet there is no such commitment to tour one site or another,” the ministry wrote in a statement to Haaretz.
Yad Vashem wrote that students sent through its programs “will not visit any site that is suspected of twisting the history of the Holocaust or promoting a historically incorrect narrative.”
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The post Yad Vashem denounces Poland’s demanded additions to Israeli student trips as ‘inappropriate’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Debating Zionism is fair. Protesting Israel’s president at commencement crosses the line
I am grateful for Noam Pianko’s recent essay, “Debating Zionism is good for Jews, actually.” Pianko argued that criticism of a small group of graduating seniors at the Jewish Theological Seminary who objected to JTS’s invitation to Israeli President Isaac Herzog to serve as this year’s commencement speaker was misguided, citing JTS’s long history of internal debates over Zionism.
I was among those critics. In a May 3 blog post for The Times of Israel I argued that even six students publicly opposing Herzog’s presence was six too many — not because Jewish institutions should avoid debate, but because there is a difference between debate premised on a shared commitment to Jewish peoplehood, and debate that rejects of one of Jewish peoplehood’s central expressions.
Pianko rightly reminds readers that JTS has never been ideologically monolithic. Its history includes tensions between tradition and change, particularism and universalism, theology and modernity. Those tensions are part of what has made JTS so influential in American Jewish life for nearly 140 years.
The history of debate over Zionism within the seminary’s intellectual culture does not weaken my concern. It sharpens it.
The crucial issue is conceptual precision. Expressions of skepticism about Zionism in earlier periods of JTS history were often very different from today’s anti-Zionism.
In some cases, they reflected a classical religious view that Jewish return and sovereignty would come through a messianic process rather than through human political action. That position was a theological claim about timing and agency, not a negation of Jewish national aspiration. In others, like Ahad Ha’am’s cultural Zionism, for example, an emphasis was put on Jewish renewal through language, spirit and civilization, while questioning whether political statehood should be the immediate or primary goal. That was an internal argument about how Jewish national life should unfold — not over whether such a life was valid.
Contemporary anti-Zionism, in contrast, frequently challenges the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty itself. That is not simply another version of an older seminary debate. It is a different claim with different consequences.
To be clear, the students’ letter is not a simple declaration of anti Zionism, and it should not be caricatured as such. Their stated concerns include the devastation of the war in Gaza, the moral responsibilities of Jewish leadership, and the fear that honoring Herzog without sufficient public reckoning sends the wrong message about Palestinian suffering.
Those concerns deserve serious engagement. But seriousness also requires asking what this protest communicates in institutional context. At a moment when the Jewish people and Israel’s legitimacy are under intense assault, opposing the presence of Israel’s president at a flagship Jewish seminary risks turning anguish over Israeli policy into a symbolic rejection of Israel’s legitimacy as a central part of Jewish life. That is the line I believe JTS must be careful not to blur.
So while Pianko is right to highlight ideological range in JTS’s past, we should not flatten the past into the present.
Zionism did not become central to Jewish life by accident. It emerged as the primary vehicle through which the Jewish people reclaimed agency, safety and a collective future after centuries of vulnerability. The establishment of the state of Israel transformed Jewish existence. That fact does not erase earlier debates, but it does change the center of gravity.
Institutions like JTS have a responsibility to teach that complexity honestly — which Herzog’s presence at commencement, and thoughtful, well-informed debates around it, will help to do. Seminaries should expose students to the range of Jewish thought, including theological reservations, cultural critiques and internal disagreements about Zionism.
At issue is not whether the varieties and history of Zionism should be debated at JTS. Of course they should. Instead, this incident is a reminder that a flagship institution of Jewish learning can and should remain clear that Jewish peoplehood, Jewish sovereignty and the state of Israel are not peripheral to contemporary Jewish identity. They are central.
The post Debating Zionism is fair. Protesting Israel’s president at commencement crosses the line appeared first on The Forward.
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UK Man in Court Charged With Arson at Former London Synagogue
Orthodox Jews stand by a police cordon, after a man was arrested following a stabbing incident in the Golders Green area, which is home to a large Jewish population, in London, Britain, April 29, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
A British man charged over an arson attack at a former synagogue in east London last week was in contact with someone using an Iraqi phone number shortly before the fire, prosecutors told a London court on Tuesday.
Moses Edwards, 45, appeared in the dock at Westminster Magistrates’ Court and was remanded in custody until a further hearing next month. He gave no indication of any plea.
The fire at the former East London Central Synagogue was caused by wine bottles filled with an accelerant, which exploded damaging the outside of the building, prosecutors said.
The incident followed a series of arson attacks on Jewish targets in previous weeks, with police saying they were investigating possible Iran links to some of the fires.
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Israeli Para-Athlete Wins Gold at European Taekwondo Championships, Beats Opponent From Azerbaijan
Asaf Yasur, center, posing with his gold medal during the awards ceremony at the 2026 European Taekwondo Championships in Munich, Germany. Photo: Facebook/Israel Taekwondo Federation
Israeli Paralympic athlete Asaf Yasur took home the gold medal in the 2026 European Senior Taekwondo Championships being held this week in Munich, Germany.
The 24-year-old competed in the men’s under-58kg weight category, and on the first day of the championships he beat Azerbaijan’s Sabir Zeynalov 2-1 in the finals after being victorious over Turkish athlete Hamza Tehrani 2-1 in the semifinal. Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah,” played in the arena during the medal ceremony, as Yasur stood on the podium with his gold medal.
The Jerusalem native had both of his hands amputated when he was 13 years old following an electrocution accident. Earlier this year, Yasur won gold at the 2026 US Open Paralympic Taekwondo Championship. He previously took home gold medals at the 2024 Paris Paralympics — where he made his Paralympics debut – the 2024 European Championships, and the 2023 World Para Taekwondo Championships. He also won the 2021 and 2023 World Para Taekwondo Championships and silver at the 2023 European Para Championships.
The European Taekwondo Union organizes the European Senior Taekwondo Championships, which is held every two years. This year marks the fourth time the championship is taking place in Germany, after previous being held in Bonn in 2006, Stuttgart in 1984, and Munich in 1978.