On Monday, Israel chastised Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for asserting that Adolf Hitler was of Jewish ancestry, calling it an “unforgivable” lie that degraded the horrors of the Holocaust.
The Israeli foreign ministry summoned the Russian ambassador and requested an apology, signaling a dramatic deterioration in relations with Moscow.
In a statement, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said, “Such lies are intended to accuse the Jews themselves of the most horrible atrocities in history that were committed against them.”
He went on to say, “The manipulation of the Holocaust of the Jewish people for political objectives must end immediately.”
On Italian television on Sunday, Lavrov was asked why Russia needed to “denazify” Ukraine if the country’s own president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was himself Jewish.
“When people say, ‘What kind of nazification is this if we are Jews,’ I believe Hitler also had Jewish ancestors, so it means nothing,” Lavrov said through an Italian interpreter on the Rete 4 station.
“We’ve been hearing the wise Jewish people say for a long time now that the biggest anti-Semites are the Jews themselves,” he continued.
The Russian minister’s words, according to Dani Dayan, head of Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the six million Jews slain in the Holocaust, were “an affront and a devastating blow to the victims of real Nazism.”
Dayan alleged Lavrov was peddling “an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory with no basis in fact” on Kan radio.
The identity of one of Hitler’s grandfathers is unknown, but there has been suspicion that he was a Jew, which has never been proven.
The Russian embassy in Israel and Lavrov in Moscow did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Lavrov’s “heinous remarks” were hurtful to Zelensky, Israel, Ukraine, and Jews, according to Kyiv.
“More broadly,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba stated on Twitter, “they indicate that today’s Russia is full of hostility for other states.”
Accusing Jews of being anti-Semites is “the lowest level of prejudice,” according to Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, whose grandfather died in the Holocaust. He also shot down Lavrov’s claim that pro-Nazi forces controlled the Ukrainian government and military.
“Ukraine’s people aren’t Nazis. Only the Nazis were Nazis, and only they were involved in the systematic extermination of Jews “According to the YNet news website, Lapid said.
Hitler’s Jewish ancestry, according to a German government official, was “absurd” propaganda.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, Israel has repeatedly stated its support for Ukraine. However, in order to avoid hurting relations with Russia, which is a power broker in neighboring Syria, it avoided harsh criticism of Moscow at first and has not imposed formal sanctions on Russian oligarchs.
Relations have deteriorated in recent months, with Lapid accusing Russia of war crimes in Ukraine last month.
However, the Ukrainian president has angered Israel by attempting to draw parallels between his country’s struggle and World War II. In a March speech to the Israeli parliament, Zelensky compared Russia’s offensive in Ukraine to Nazi Germany’s aim to exterminate all Jews within its reach during WWII.
His remarks, according to Yad Vashem, were “irresponsible,” trivializing the Holocaust’s historical truths.
