Timothy Kirkhope rebuts the smears against Michal Kamiński

Labour politicians and the Left-wing press - aided and abetted by Edward McMillan-Scott MEP - have been trying to smear Michal Kamiński (pictured) ever since he became leader of the new European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European Parliament.

Today, the Guardian's Comment is Free website has published a full rebuttal of the disgraceful claims whcih has been written by the Conservative leader in Brussels, Timothy Kirkhope MEP.

Read the full article here, but here is a key extract:

"Kamiński has made it clear that he was a member of the National Revival as a teenager but left well before it took on a far-right platform. He has fought for human rights and for liberal and democratic values in Poland. He supports civil partnerships for homosexuals (although not marriage). He fought in the underground against Poland's authoritarian Communist regime and, as a teenager, risked his personal freedom for the freedom of his nation.

"He learned English by listening to illegal broadcasts of the BBC and has admired Britain as a nation that helped liberate eastern Europe from tyranny. It is ironic that the freedom of the press for which he yearned as a teenager has been so widely ill-treated to smear his name

"And then we come to the allegation that Kamiński is antisemitic. Speaking as European chairman of the Conservative Friends of Israel, I know that Kamiński is, like me, a life-long friend of the Jewish community.

"Before returning to the European parliament last month, Kamiński was spokesman for President Kaczyński of Poland who has been described in the pages of Israeli paper Ha'aretz as having "long been a friend to the Jewish community".

"Kamiński's website has pictures of him decorating the (Jewish) chief of staff to President Obama, Rahm Emanuel, with the Polish Cross of Merit in 2008 when Emanuel was a congressman and he was a Polish minister.

"On the specific point of the Jedwabne pogrom, Kamiński has made it clear that the acts were horrific and murderous but that the whole Polish nation should not be held responsible for the terrible and murderous acts of a few. The former Polish prime minister, Jerzy Buzek, now president of the European parliament, has himself said: "The crime committed in Jedwabne 60 years ago cannot be blamed on all Poles alive today."

Jonathan Isaby