(JTA) — The person widely-regarded as the most powerful politician in Poland called Israel a “great country” whose establishment is a “modern-day miracle” in a speech in which he also condemned anti-Semitism and attempts to boycott the Jewish state.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a founder of Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice Party, made the statements Monday during an event organized by the From the Depths Holocaust commemoration group in honor of people who are believed to have helped Jews during the Holocaust.

In his address at the Warsaw Zoo, where From the Depths held an event honoring presumed saviors of Jews, Kaczynski said that “the European left, but also other political forces, typically treats Israel with anti-Semitic” attitudes. He condemned anti-Semitism “in the strongest terms.”

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Speaking after Yehiel Bar, the deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Kaczynski revisited a remark that Bar made in his address, in which he called Israel a “small country.” Kaczynski said: “In its own way, Israel is not a small country but a great one” that needs to be viewed as a manifestation of a divine plan “without which Israel could not exist.” That it does exist, “is a modern-day miracle,” Kaczynski said.

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