“Hitler also had Jewish blood”: Nazi comparison by the Russian foreign minister horrifies Israel – Politics

Tel Aviv

– Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has condemned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s Nazi comparisons regarding the war against Ukraine. What he now demands and what consequence has already been initiated.

“His statements are untrue and serve a false purpose,” Bennett said on Monday, according to his office. “The goal of such lies is to blame the Jews themselves for the worst crimes in history that have been committed against them.”

On Sunday evening on the Italian television channel Rete 4, Lavrov repeated the Russian justification for war that Nazis were at work in Ukraine. As a counter-argument, they say: “How can there be a nazification when he (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy) is a Jew? I may be wrong. But Adolf Hitler also had Jewish blood. That means nothing at all. The wise Jewish people say that the most fervent anti-Semites are usually Jews.”

apology requested

The government in Jerusalem then demanded an apology, and the Foreign Ministry called in the Russian Ambassador Anatoly Viktorov for a meeting on Monday.

“There is no contemporary war like or comparable to the Holocaust, Bennett said. “The misuse of the Shoah by the Jewish people as an instrument of political debate must stop immediately.”

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Israel has traditionally had good relations with both Russia and Ukraine. Bennett has spoken to both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on numerous occasions since Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine began. In March he even met Putin personally in Moscow. So far, Bennett has only expressed cautious criticism of Russia’s actions.

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