Israel criticizes Sergei Lavrov for claiming Hitler has Jewish roots

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the startling suggestion that Nazi Germany leader Adolf Hitler had Jewish roots – prompting the Israeli prime minister to issue a rebuke accusing the official of using the Holocaust as a “battering ram.”

Lavrov made the comments Sunday when questioned by Italian media about how Russia could claim it intended to “denazify” Ukraine when President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish.

“When they say ‘What kind of Nazisification is that if we’re Jews,’ then I think Hitler was also of Jewish origin, so that doesn’t mean anything,” Lavrov said.​

“For a long time we have heard the wise Jews say that the greatest anti-Semites are the Jews themselves,” the Russian foreign minister said

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Monday branded Lavrov’s claims as “lies”.

“Such lies are intended to blame the Jews themselves for the most horrific crimes in history committed against them,” Bennett said in a statement.

“As I said before, no war today is the Holocaust, nor is it like the Holocaust,” he continued. “The use of the Jewish people’s Holocaust as a political battering ram must be stopped immediately.”

Lavrov’s Israeli counterpart, Yair Lapid, called for an apology, calling the comments “unforgivable and outrageous.”

“The Jews didn’t kill themselves in the Holocaust,” Lapid said. “The lowest level of racism against Jews is to blame the Jews themselves for anti-Semitism.”​

Dani Dayan, chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, comments Lavrov “an insult and a heavy blow to the victims of true Nazism.”

He said Lavrov was spreading “an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory without any factual basis”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the invasion of Ukraine, which he launched on February 24, as ridding the eastern neighbor of Nazi elements.

With mail wires