Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has enraged Israeli leadership, the Israeli public and Jews around the world for stating that Hitler had Jewish blood.
Sergey Lavrov was interviewed on Italian television when asked about Russia’s continued claims that its invasion of Ukraine was somehow intended to cleanse the country of control by Nazis. This is one of the many justifications given by the Russian government for invading its neighbor without provocation. The interviewer even pointed out that the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, is himself a Jew.
In response to that point – one which many the world over have made in the more than 2 months since the Russian invasion of Ukraine first began – Sergey Lavrov responded callously, “The fact that Zelensky is Jewish does not negate the Nazi elements in Ukraine. I believe that Hitler also had Jewish blood.”
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The Russian Foreign Minister went on to say that many Jews around the world are themselves anti-Semites. “For a long time now we’ve been hearing the wise Jewish people say that the biggest anti-Semites are the Jews themselves,” he said.
Condemnation of Sergey Lavrov’s comments was swift. The Prime Minister of Israel Naftali Bennett issued a statement demanding an apology. “I view with utmost severity the Russian Foreign Minister’s statement,” he said. “His words are untrue and their intentions are wrong.”
Bennett went on to explain that the goal of such lies is to “accuse the Jews themselves of the most awful crimes in history, which were perpetrated against them, and thereby absolve Israel’s enemies of responsibility.”
The Prime Minister added that no war in our time is like the Holocaust or is comparable to the Holocaust and further demanded that the “use of the Holocaust of the Jewish people as a political tool must cease immediately.”
Israeli Foreign Ministry Yair Lapid also demanded an apology.
Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial and museum located in Jerusalem, issued a statement of condemnation of its own. “The remarks of Russian Foreign Minister Sergeĭ Lavrov, as quoted, are absurd, delusional, dangerous and deserving of condemnation,” it read.
“Lavrov is propagating the inversion of the Holocaust – turning the victims into the criminals on the basis of promoting a completely unfounded claim that Hitler was of Jewish descent,” said Yad Vashem. “Equally serious is calling the Ukrainians in general, and President Zelensky in particular, Nazis. This, among other things, is a complete distortion of the history and an affront to the victims of Nazism.”
At this time the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has not yet issued a response to the growing official statements of condemnation over his words.
