Israel slammed on Monday the vote by the Polish parliament to ban kosher meat production, saying it damaged efforts to rehabilitate Jewish life in a country whose large Jewish community was all but wiped out in the Holocaust.
On Friday, Polish MPs in the Sjem rejected a government-backed bill that would have allowed slaughterhouses to produce meat in accordance with shechita, the Jewish ritual law, citing animal cruelty.
Israel's Foreign Ministry called the vote "totally unacceptable".
"Poland's history is intertwined with the history of the Jewish people. This decision seriously harms the process of restoring Jewish life in Poland," it said in a statement.
"We call on the parliament to reassess its decision and expect the relevant authorities to find the way to prevent a crude blow to the religious tradition of the Jewish people."
The Speaker of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, Yuli Edelstein, sent a letter to his counterpart, Ewa Kopacz, in which he stresses that the decision denies basic minority rights. ‘’The lamentable decision taken by your parliament last week to reject the law makes one wonder how a democratic country like modern-day Poland in 2013 Europe can deny basic rights of minorities such a Jews and Muslims,’’ he wrote.
Edelestein said Poland is ‘’morally obligated to change the policy, which sends a negative message to the rest of Europe.’’
Poland was one of the largest exporters of kosher meat to Israel and some Muslim countries.