Israeli leaders on Monday denounced Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for saying Nazi leader Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood” and that Jews are among the worst antisemites.
Lavrov made the remarks during an interview with Italian television, in which he claimed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Jewishness did not undercut Russia’s claims that its invasion of Ukraine was meant to “denazify” the country.
“The aim of such lies is to blame the Jews themselves for the most terrible crimes in history that were committed against them, thus freeing from responsibility the oppressors of Israel,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement from his office.
Bennett’s denunciation followed stronger condemnation from Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and other Israeli ministers.
“This is an unforgivable and scandalous comment, a terrible historical error and we expect an apology,” Lapid said. “The Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust. The lowest form of racism against Jews is blaming the Jews themselves for antisemitism.”
Persistent conspiracy theories that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had some Jewish ancestry that may have motivated his antisemitism and the murder of six million Jews have been repeatedly debunked by historians.
Lapid said Russian Ambassador Anatoly Viktorov would be summoned for “a not-so easy talk.” According to the Foreign Ministry, Viktorov has been called in for a “clarification conversation.”
“A new low for antisemitism was reached this...
A popular social media conspiracy theory about a recent cluster of hantavirus cases claims that the word “hanta” means “scam,” “fraud,” or “nonsense” in “Hebrew slang.” That’s more or less where t...