Konrad Berkowicz MP, who sits in the Polish parliament for the right-wing Confederation Party, displayed an Israeli flag marked with a swastika during his speech yesterday.
At the start, Berkowicz used graphic language to describe the war in the Middle East.
“Jews use the banned phosphorus bomb, which absorbs oxygen from the air and causes children to die by suffocation,” he claimed.
The MP went on to describe in detail the suffering of civilians at the hands of the Israelis.
“The smoke from this phosphorus bomb gets into the lungs and burns them from the inside. Tens of thousands of women and children are suffocating and burning from the inside at the same time.
“But if some child is lucky and does not suffocate, white phosphorus sticks to the cheek, to the hand, and burns through the tissue to the bone. It cannot be extinguished, so the cheek is cut off, the hand is amputated,” he said.
Berkowicz went on to accuse Israel of “committing genocide before our eyes with particular cruelty”, before proceeding to compare Israel with Nazi Germany.
“Israel is the new Third Reich and its flag should look exactly like this,” he said, before unfurling the Israeli flag altered to include the sign of the swastika instead of the star of David.
He was immediately reprimanded by the parliament’s Speaker Włodzimierz Czarzasty who said that “displaying a swastika in the Polish parliament is never justified “.
Skandal w Sejmie. Konrad Berkowicz podczas swojego wystąpienia wyciągnął flagę Izraela ze swastyką. pic.twitter.com/kS4Puqubab
— PolskieRadio24.pl (@PR24_pl) April 14, 2026
Members of the ruling majority who support Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centre-left government also protested against Berkowicz’s remarks.
They called on the Speaker to forward a transcript of the speech to prosecutors so that they could initiate criminal proceedings.
Polish law makes displaying Nazi symbols punishable by up to three years in jail but only if they are used to promote Nazi ideology or to incite ethnic, racial or religious hatred.
Berkowicz’s actions were slammed by the US ambassador to Poland, Tom Rose, who has spent seven years as publisher and CEO of the Jerusalem Post and is a vocal supporter of Israel.
“SHAME SHAME SHAME on YOU!!,” wrote Rose, adding that Jews “aren’t so easy to push around anymore” and able to “defend ourselves with all our strength”.
SHAME SHAME SHAME on YOU!! Maybe even you have noticed that we Jews aren’t so easy to push around anymore, are we? We defend ourselves with all our strength without apology — we stand with our friends and we know how to fight and defeat our enemies!!! https://t.co/3nZUDTfKKs
— Tom Rose (@TomRoseIndy) April 14, 2026
Clips of Berkowicz’s speech were shared on social media by official Confederation Party accounts, as well as by the personal account of one of the group’s leaders, Sławomir Mentzen, who wrote in English: “Israel is the new Third Reich!”
This was not the first time the Confederation Party, which has 16 MPs in the 460-member parliament, has voiced its views on Israel.
Last year, the party submitted a resolution to parliament condemning both “the criminal terrorist attacks by Hamas against the civilian population of Israel” as well as “the criminal and genocidal actions against civilians carried out by the Israeli armed forces in Gaza”.
In terms of criticism of Israel, though, Confederation has been consistently outflanked on the Right by Grzegorz Braun MEP and his “Confederation of the Polish Crown “ party, a grouping that split off from the Confederation Party last year.
Braun has in the past used a fire extinguisher to put out a Hanukkah menorah in the Polish parliament, an incident for which he is currently facing trial in the Polish courts after his European parliamentary immunity was rescinded.
He has protested against Israeli actions in Gaza during a Holocaust memorial ceremony in the European Parliament’s chamber and recently cast doubt on the existence of the gas chambers in the Auschwitz concentration camp in a radio interview.
