JERUSALEM/WARSAW (Reuters) - Swastikas and profanities were daubed on the entrance to Poland’s embassy in Israel on Sunday after Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Jews, as well as Poles and others, were among perpetrators of the Nazi Holocaust. 
 
 Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki visits the Ulma Family Museum of Poles Who Saved Jews during WWII in Markowa, Poland February 2, 2018. Agencja Gazeta/Patryk Ogorzalek via REUTERS 
 
 Poland sparked international criticism over its stance on the facts of the Holocaust when it passed a law imposing jail terms for suggesting the country was complicit in the deaths of millions of Jews during the war. 
 
 At the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Morawiecki was asked by an Israeli reporter whether the reporter himself could be penalized for telling a story in Poland about his mother, who survived the Holocaust, and told him that some Poles had collaborated with the Gestapo. 
 
 In his answer, Morawiecki equated “Jewish perpetrators” with Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and German perpetrators, drawing immediate criticism from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called his words “outrageous”. 
 
 Poland’s government said Morawiecki’s comments were not intended to deny the Holocaust or allege that Jewish victims bore responsibility for “Nazi German-perpetrated genocide”. 
 
 At the Polish embassy in Tel Aviv on Sunday, swastikas and anti-Polish profanities were found drawn in marker pen on a gate and bulletin board. Police, who released photographs of the markings, opened an investigation. 
 
 Netanyahu spoke by telephone on Sunday with Morawiecki and rejected any comparison between Polish and Jewish actions during the Holocaust, a statement issued by the Israeli prime minister’s office said. 
 
 “The aim of the Holocaust was to destroy the Jewish people and that every Jew, everywhere, was facing a death sentence,” it quoted Netanyahu as saying. 
 
 Netanyahu and his Polish counterpart agreed to continue to pursue a dialogue on the new law, and that teams from both sides would meet soon, the statement said. 
 
 Some 3 million Jews who lived in pre-war Poland were murdered by the Nazis, accounting for about half of all Jews killed in the Holocaust. 
 
 Jews from across the continent were sent to be killed at death camps built and operated by Germans in occupied Poland — home to Europe’s biggest Jewish community at the time — including Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor. 
 
 Thousands of Poles risked their lives to protect Jewish neighbors during the war. But research published since the fall of communism in 1989 showed that thousands also killed Jews or denounced those who hid them to the Nazi occupiers, challenging the national narrative that Poland was solely a victim. 
 
 According to figures from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Nazis, who invaded Poland in 1939, also killed at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians. 
 
 “Attempts to equate the crimes of Nazi German perpetrators with the actions of their victims — Jewish, Polish, Romani among others — who struggled for survival should be met with resolute, outright condemnation,” the Polish government’s statement also said. ||||| Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned as “outrageous” his Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki’s remark Saturday that Jewish perpetrators were also responsible for the Holocaust. 
 
 “The Polish prime minister’s remarks here in Munich are outrageous,” said Netanyahu, who is also in Germany for a security conference. 
 
 “There is a problem here of an inability to understand history and a lack of sensitivity to the tragedy of our people. I intend to speak with him forthwith,” Netanyahu said in a statement from Munich. 
 
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 Addressing the Munich Security Conference earlier, Morawiecki was rejecting criticism of a new law that criminalizes mentions of Polish state complicity in the Holocaust, when he was asked by an Israeli journalist if sharing his family’s history of persecution in Poland would be outlawed under the new legislation. 
 
 “Of course it’s not going to be punishable, [it’s] not going to be seen as criminal to say that there were Polish perpetrators, as there were Jewish perpetrators, as there were Russian perpetrators, as there were Ukrainian; not only German perpetrators,” Morawiecki told Yedioth Ahronoth’s Ronen Bergman. 
 
 צפו | ראש ממשלת פולין בתשובה לשאלתו של @ronenbergman: "בשואה היו פושעים פולנים, כמו שהיו פושעים יהודים" • @DorGlick עם הפרטים המלאים והתיעוד >> https://t.co/eFLSq9LWO8 pic.twitter.com/ZCV6j8faw7 — חדשות עשר (@news10) February 17, 2018 
 
 Morawiecki’s was harshly criticized by opposition lawmakers. 
 
 “Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki talks like the last of the Holocaust deniers. The blood of millions of Jews cries out from the ground in Poland over the distortion of history and escape from blame,” tweeted party leader Avi Gabbay. 
 
 “Jews were murdered in the Holocaust and Poles took an active part in their murder. The Israeli government must be here for the millions murdered and strongly condemn the Polish prime minister’s words,” he said. 
 
 Tzipi Livni, a Zionist Union MK and former foreign minister who was in the audience, said it was “moving to hear Ronen Bergman asking/attacking the Polish prime minister over the law that forbids mentioning the participation of the Polish nation in the Holocaust, as [Bergman] told his family story and received applause from the audience.” 
 
 Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, one of the most vocal Israeli critics of the Polish law, said Morawiecki’s statement is “anti-Semitism of the oldest kind.” 
 
 “The perpetrators are not the victims. The Jewish state will not allow the murdered to be blamed for their own murder,” he said, while calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recall Israel’s ambassador to Warsaw. 
 
 The Polish Prime Minister’s statement is antisemitism of the oldest kind. The perpetrators are not the victims. The Jewish state will not allow the murdered to be blamed for their own murder. I again call upon the Prime Minister to immediately recall our Ambassador to Israel. — יאיר לפיד (@yairlapid) February 17, 2018 
 
 Zionist Union MK Ksenia Svetlova said Morawiecki’s remark “shows his true face.” 
 
 “It should be remembered that according to the most conservative estimate 200,000 Jews in Poland were murdered by Poles,” she tweeted, adding that “the crisis with Poland is only getting worse and there is no room here for compromises.” 
 
 “If we don’t stand up for the truth, no will do it for us.” 
 
 Fellow Zionist Union MK Itzik Shmuli also criticized the Polish prime minister, saying the next phase in his “pathetic project” would be “blaming the Jews for their own Holocaust.” 
 
 probably the next step of Morawiecki’s pathetic project to erasing the crimes of the Polish is going to be blaming the Jews for their own Holocaust and presenting the Nazis as victims of the circumstances.He would have to sue the 6M victims Jews+my state????????before it will happen! https://t.co/wKmDv470Tq — איציק שמולי (@ishmuli) February 17, 2018 
 
 In response to Bergman’s question, Morawiecki said the new law aimed to prevent falsely attributing Nazi crimes in Poland under Nazi occupation to Polish government policy at the time. He said that last year Polish embassies had to respond 260 times to statements referring to “Polish death camps.” 
 
 He said the Polish people generally aided their “Jewish brothers and sisters” during the war, and that the lines between Holocaust victims and perpetrators were becoming increasingly blurred. 
 
 The legislation prescribes prison time for using phrases such as “Polish death camps” to refer to the killing sites Nazi Germany operated in occupied Poland during World War II. Its provisions run wider, however: 
 
 “Whoever accuses, publicly and against the facts, the Polish nation, or the Polish state, of being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich… or other crimes against peace and humanity, or war crimes, or otherwise grossly diminishes the actual perpetrators thereof, shall be subject to a fine or a penalty of imprisonment of up to three years,” a translation of a key paragraph of the bill reads. 
 
 The legislation sparked outrage in Israel, with some lawmakers accusing the Polish government of outright Holocaust denial. 
 
 The dispute has elicited bitter recriminations on both sides. Some Israelis have accused the mostly Catholic Poles of being driven by anti-Semitism and of trying to deny the Holocaust. Poles believe that they are being defamed by being linked to German crimes, of which they were one of the largest group of victims. 
 
 Israel, along with several international Holocaust organizations and many critics in Poland, argues that the law could have a chilling effect on debating history, harming freedom of expression and leading to a whitewashing of Poland’s wartime history. 
 
 Netanyahu has pilloried the law as “distortion of the truth, the rewriting of history, and the denial of the Holocaust.” 
 
 Amid the dispute some Polish commentators, including in government-controlled media, have made strong anti-Jewish remarks. 
 
 In one instance, the head of a state-run channel suggested referring to Auschwitz as a “Jewish death camp,” in response to an outcry over use of the term “Polish death camp” to describe the Nazi killing site in German-occupied Poland. 
 
 Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
– Swastikas and profanity were reportedly scrawled on the property of the Polish embassy in Israel over the weekend in the wake of controversial remarks made by the country's prime minister about the Holocaust. The symbol of hate appeared on the entrance to the property in Tel Aviv on Sunday, one day after Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki publicly suggested that Jews, along with Poles and others, were among those responsible for aiding the Nazi genocide, Reuters reports. An estimated 3 million Jewish people living in Poland are believed to have been murdered by the Nazis prior to World War II. The markings were reportedly written in marker on both the gate and a bulletin board and included both swastikas and anti-Polish profanities. Police released photos of the vandalism and said they will be investigating the incident. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu swiftly condemned Morawiecki's remarks after the Polish leader made them in response to an Israeli reporter's question regarding a new law in Poland that seeks to punish with jail time anyone who says the country was "responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich." “The Polish prime minister’s remarks here in Munich are outrageous,” said Netanyahu after Morawiecki referenced "Jewish perpetrators" in his statement in the German city on Saturday, the Times of Israel reports. It is Morawiecki's stance that Poland was a victim of Nazi occupation and that most Polish people attempted to help their friends and neighbors as millions of Jews from across Europe were sent to death camps. (A secret forest birthday party for Hitler caused revulsion in Poland.)