‘If Europe opens its gates to Muslims, there will be beheadings here’

GDANSK – It was difficult to know whether Lech Walesa was cynical, joking or dead serious. Maybe all of the above.

 

 

His direct approach to, and simplistic views of, a complicated international reality can embarrass the listener. Nevertheless, it is clear that the former president of the Polish Republic – a Nobel Prize laureate, who co-founded Solidarity, contributed to the collapse of the Soviet bloc and became an icon of liberty and freedom – can allow himself to be his country’s enfant terrible. And it seems that he enjoys this position.

 

 

His answers to our questions solidified his image as an ardent Catholic and a conservative homophobe who opposes the absorption of immigrants, doesn’t appreciate US President Barack Obama and has an amusing solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict.

 

 

We – a group of Israeli journalists – met him earlier this month in his office at the European Solidarity Center and found him in a good mood.

 

 

Resembling the hull of a ship, the impressive and moving museum and learning center stands out for its uncommon use of Corten steel, which has a rustlike appearance. The building is located where the gate to Gdansk’s Lenin Shipyards once stood, the gate over which, in 1980,Walesa, then an unknown electrician, climbed to declare a workers strike. The rest is history.

 

 

Read More: ‘If Europe opens its gates to Muslims, there will be beheadings here’ – Israel News – Jerusalem Post

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