Israel Summons Russia’s Ambassador, Demands Apology Over Lavrov’s Remarks About Hitler, Zelensky

In an interview with an Italian TV channel on Sunday, the Russian foreign minister suggested that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s oft-made claim that Ukraine does not suffer from problems with Nazism because Zelensky himself is Jewish was severely flawed.

Israel summoned Russian Ambassador to Israel Anatoly Viktorov on Monday over Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s comments about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Adolf Hitler.

In an interview with Mediaset Italia on Sunday, Lavrov was asked to comment on Zelensky’s claims that Russia’s de-Nazification operation in Ukraine “doesn’t make sense” because “he himself is a Jew,” and that the numbers of neo-Nazis fighting in groups like the Azov Regiment was insignificant.

“There is Nazification” in Ukraine, Lavrov retorted. “The captured militants, as well as members of the Azov and Aidar battalions and other units, wear swastikas or symbols of Nazi Waffen-SS battalions on their clothes or have them tattooed on their bodies; they openly read and promote Mein Kampf”, he said.

“Zelensky’s argument is: How can there be Nazism in Ukraine if he is a Jew? I may be mistaken but Adolf Hitler had Jewish blood, too. This means absolutely nothing. The wise Jewish people say that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews. ‘Every family has its black sheep’, as we say”, the Russian foreign minister added.

Lavrov’s comments sparked a firestorm of criticism in Israel, with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett saying that “lies like these are meant to blame the Jews themselves for the most terrible crimes in history.”

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid called the comments “unforgivable and outrageous, and a terrible historic mistake”, adding that “the Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust”. Lapid went on to suggest that “the basest level of racism against Jews is to blame the Jews themselves for anti-Semitism”.

Israeli media blasted Lavrov’s comments as evidence of “bountiful conspiracies about Hitler’s Jewish blood”, but did not elaborate on what about them was so “conspiratorial” or controversial.

The subject of Adolf Hitler’s roots has been hotly debated by historians for decades, and began following the publication of the memoirs of Hans Frank, the Fuhrer’s personal attorney, in the early 1950s. Frank claimed Hitler’s paternal grandfather was a Jewish man from Graz, Austria.

Historians initially dismissed Frank’s allegations, citing the conclusions of a single academic – Nikolaus von Preradovich – a suspected Nazi sympathiser who claimed that there were no Jews in Graz at the time that Hitler’s father, Alois, was born in 1837. However, a 2019 academic article in the peer-reviewed Journal of European Studies by Dr Leonard Sax postulated, citing data from Austrian archives from the 1800s, that a community of Jews did indeed live in Graz at the time that Alois was born.