Amid ‘Jewish Hitler’ Spat, Russia Claims Israel Backs Neo-Nazis in Ukraine

Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday accused Israel of supporting neo-Nazis in Ukraine, a day after Israel expressed outrage over Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s claim that Hitler had Jewish blood.

The charge came after the Israeli Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian Ambassador to Israel Anatoly Viktorov for a “tough conversation” in the wake of Lavrov’s incendiary remarks.

The two sides agreed that moving forward, they would refrain from speaking about the matter in public, The Jerusalem Post reported, citing a diplomatic source.

However, Russia’s foreign ministry still went ahead with a statement claiming that Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s comments condemning Lavrov were “anti-historical” and “explaining to a large extent why the current Israeli government supports the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv.”

Moscow also doubled down on Lavrov’s explanation that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Jewishness “does not negate the Nazi elements in Ukraine.”

“Antisemitism in everyday life and in politics is not stopped and is, on the contrary, nurtured [in Ukraine],” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in the statement.

In his remarks on Italian television on Sunday, Lavrov said: “When they say ‘What sort of denazification is this if we are Jews’, well I think that Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it means nothing.”

“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.

Lapid on Tuesday declined to elaborate on the details of the meeting between his office and Viktorov, saying that “if you summon an ambassador, you don’t publicize the details of the conversation.”

However, he went on to say that “you would be correct to assume that it was a very tough conversation.”

“It is unforgivable, unforgivable, to blame Jews for their own Holocaust. Hitler was not Jewish and Jews did not murder my grandfather in Mauthausen. The Nazis did it, and all of these comparisons to the Nazis are unforgivable and maddening,” he went on, adding that the Russian government needs to apologize to the Jews in memory of those murdered at the hands of the Nazis.

Lapid also said he did not dismiss the possibility that Lavrov’s claim was in retaliation for the Israeli foreign minister’s own accusation that Russia was guilty of war crimes in Ukraine.

“We are protecting our national security interest, but Israel is not just interests; it’s values,” he said. “Part of our scale of values is that the Russian invasion is not justified and has to stop. We say it and vote in international institutions when we need to.

“We protect national interests in Syria,” Lapid said, referring to Jerusalem’s military coordination with Moscow when it came to strikes on Iranian targets in Syria, “but no one will tell us we can’t express a moral position.”

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett also broke his silence on Russia’s actions, and delivered a harsh rebuke of Lavrov.

“Lies like these are meant to blame the Jews themselves for the most terrible crimes in history, which were committed against them, and thus free the oppressors of the Jews from their responsibility,” he said.

“As I’ve already said, no war today is the Holocaust nor is it like the Holocaust,” Bennett stated. “The use of the Holocaust of the Jewish people as a political battering ram must be stopped immediately.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken also condemned Lavrov’s remarks, saying: “It is incumbent on the world to speak out against such vile, dangerous rhetoric and support our Ukrainian partners in the face of the Kremlin’s vicious assault.”