Foreign Minister Lavrov’s remarks are both an unforgivable and outrageous statement as well as a terrible historical error. Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust. The lowest level of racism against Jews is to accuse Jews themselves of antisemitism.
— יאיר לפיד – Yair Lapid🟠 (@yairlapid) May 2, 2022
HAHA.
“Zelensky is no better than that kike Hitler.”
Israel lambasted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday for claiming that Adolf Hitler had Jewish origins, saying it was an “unforgivable” falsehood that debased the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust.
In a signal of sharply deteriorating relations with Moscow, the Israeli foreign ministry summoned the Russian ambassador and demanded an apology.
“Such lies are intended to accuse the Jews themselves of the most horrific crimes in history that were committed against them,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement.
“The use of the Holocaust of the Jewish people for political purposes must stop immediately,” he added.
Oh, okay, Jews.
Sure.
Okay.
Lavrov made the assertion on Italian television on Sunday when he was asked why Russia said it needed to “denazify” Ukraine if the country’s own president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, was himself Jewish.
“When they say ‘What sort of nazification is this if we are Jews’, well I think that Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it means nothing,” Lavrov told Rete 4 channel, speaking through an Italian interpreter.
“For a long time now we’ve been hearing the wise Jewish people say that the biggest anti-Semites are the Jews themselves,” he added.
There was no immediate response for comment from the Russian embassy to Israel or from Lavrov in Moscow.
Kyiv condemned Lavrov’s words, saying his “heinous remarks” were offensive to Zelenskiy, to Israel, Ukraine and Jews.
Everyone was offended!
It was like another Holocaust all over again!
“More broadly, they demonstrate that today’s Russia is full of hatred towards other nations,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter.
Israeli Foreign Ministry Yair Lapid, whose grandfather died in the Holocaust, said that accusing Jews of being anti-Semites was “the basest level of racism”. He also dismissed Lavrov’s assertion that pro-Nazi elements held sway over the Ukrainian government and military.
“The Ukrainians aren’t Nazis. Only the Nazis were Nazis and only they dealt with the systematic destruction of the Jewish people,” Lapid told the YNet news website.
I don’t think he’s even calling Jews “anti-Semites” when he talks about Zelensky being a “Nazi.”
It’s really only America and the West that define Hitler as “World War Auschwitz Man.”
In Russia, Hitler is a lot more linked to the war than the Holocaust, with the latter not really being a part of Russian cultural identity.
That is to say:
- “Hitler is bad because he fought a war with us,” is different than
- “Hitler is bad because he hurt the Jews”
It’s not really surprising that Russians would associate Nazis with Jews, since both are viewed as enemies of Russia.
But yeah – we’re seeing total degradation of relations with Israel.
Interesting to watch.