Draft Federation Letter to Israeli Ambassador on Damian Sobol

 

To Ambassador Jakov Livne,

Israeli Embassy

Ul. Ludwika Krzywickiego 24,

02-078 Warszawa,

Poland

Thursday, 4th April 2024

Dear Mr Ambassador,

The Polish community in the UK was horrified by the massacre of Israeli citizens on October 7th by

Hamas terrorists last year, and has always believed in the right of the state of Israel to exist and

to defend itself.

However, that outrage cannot justify in any way the deliberate targeting and killing this week in

three separate vehicles of 7 foreign aid workers from the charity organization World Central

Kitchen. In particular, the Polish community was shocked that one of the innocent victims of these

three separate attacks was an experienced Polish aid worker Damian Soból, who had previously

worked as a volunteer aid worker in Ukraine and Turkey, and equally shocked at the news

of British victims of this attack, John Chapman, James Henderson, and James Kirby. Their only

motivation for their presence in Gaza was to help the victims of famine and disaster. Even though

the Israeli Prime Minister has admitted that the Israeli Defence Force caused these attacks,

neither he, nor the Israeli Ambassador in Poland, have apologized fully for these deaths, and the

latter has caused further outrage to the people of Poland and to the Polish community in the UK

by using this incident as an opportunity to enter a polemic about alleged antisemitism in Poland.

We believe that the Israeli government should issue a public apology for this incident, as well as

conduct a full investigation to establish who was personally responsible for this decision, while the

families of these 7 victims should be fully compensated by the Israeli government.

We further believe that the possibility of further such deaths of innocent victims can only be

prevented by the government of Israel responding positively to calls from Israel’s friends and

allies for an immediate cessation of hostilities in Gaza.

Yours faithfully,

Alicja Donimirska

Chair of the Federation of Poles in Great Britain

cc to Israeli Ambassador in London

Draft of Federation letter to Keir Starmer on EU citizens

 

Dear Sir Keir,

 

As the umbrella body for the main Polish organizations in the UK since 1947 we strongly urge you to announce that a future UK government led by yourself would offer default UK citizenship to all Polish and other EU citizens living in the UK with settled status. We believe that you could also eventually extend this to those with pre-settled status as soon as their 5 year temporary status expires. You would be right to think that this would reassure them of their continued further integration into the UK economy and into the social and cultural fabric of this country. It would also fulfil the promise made by those campaigning to leave the EU in 2016 that the security of EU citizens living in this country would be assured.

While we have strongly supported the recent campaign by the3million and others to extend voting rights in parliamentary elections to those EU citizens with settled status, yet this proposal has not yet been adopted by either of the main political parties. Consequently, more than 4 million UK taxpayers with EU citizenship remain without parliamentary representation in this country. We feel that their chance to have automatic access to UK citizenship, despite the inevitable initial fee, would resolve in a more straightforward way the issue of their current disenfranchisement. Parliamentary voting rights for EU citizens as EU citizens, would require introducing a constitutional change, but this would not be true of a decision to extend UK citizenship to them. Currently, while they are valuable stakeholders in British society and the British economy, they are still living at the whim of possible Home Office reinterpretations of their status, similar to that faced by the Windrush generation. They live with the status of “immigrant” which makes them feel vulnerable each time the issue of immigration arises in public debate. 

At least 1.138 million Polish nationals in this country have applied successfully for either settled or pre-settled status and have long been making a valuable contribution to this country. It would be advantageous for a future UK government to cement that positive achievement with the unconditional offer of UK citizenship. We look forward to your confirmation that you would want to  proceed with this generous but sensible proposal.

Yours sincerely