A far-right Polish member of parliament has used a fire extinguisher to douse a Hanukkah menorah at an event for the Polish Jewish community at the Polish parliament.
The incident happened shortly after 4pm Polish time (3pm Irish time) on a day when newly elected Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced his programme for government in parliament and named his proposed cabinet ministers.
Footage filmed by journalists in parliament shows Grzegorz Braun grabbing a fire extinguisher before walking towards the event and putting out lit candles on the menorah.
Members of Poland's Jewish community had been invited to the event to celebrate Hanukkah by the speaker of the Polish parliament.
Poland's chief rabbi and the Israeli ambassador to Poland were attending the event.
The incident was immediately announced in the lower house of parliament, the Sejm, by liberal MP Witold Zembaczynski.
"In Poland, there is no place for anti-Semitic acts under the roof of the Sejm," he said.
Other MPs took to the podium to condemn Mr Braun's action.
Mr Braun, still covered in foam from the extinguisher, spoke at the podium and said: "There can be no place for acts of racist, tribal, savage, Talmudic worship on the premises of the Sejm."
In response, the Speaker of parliament, Szymon Holownia excluded Mr Braun from the lower house and said: "It's just disgusting. An act of rudeness, aggression and stupidity."
Mr Holownia said that that an application would be submitted to the prosecutor's office.
Mr Braun is a member of the far-right Confederation party, whose 18 MPs make up the smallest party in the Polish parliament.
The party's co-leader Slawomir Mentzen said on X, formerly Twitter: "I condemn the act of Grzegorz Braun. I will take further steps on this issue in the near future."
Confederation is a coalition of three right-wing parties and Mr Braun's faction is considered the most hardline. Last June, he disrupted a discussion on the Holocaust at Warsaw's German Historical Institute.
He has also aired anti-LGBTQ comments in the past.
During a television interview in 2019, he called for the "criminalisation of sodomy".
Poland's Jewish community, once the largest in Europe prior to World War II, now numbers around 4,500 people.
