By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency
Jerusalem, Israel — May 2, 2022 … Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, made it clear today that Israel is no longer neutral or would work as a go between Russia and Ukraine.
“I view with utmost severity the Russian Foreign Minister’s statement,” said Bennett.
Bennett was directly referring to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attacking Ukraine and its president Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday during an interview in Italy, saying that “the fact that he is a Jew does not negate the Nazi elements in his country. I believe that Adolf Hitler also had Jewish blood.”
Lavrov said: “Zelensky can promote peace between the states if he stops giving orders to his Nazi forces that border on crime.”
Bennett stated: “His words are untrue and their intentions are wrong.”
“The goal of such lies is to accuse the Jews themselves of the most awful crimes in history, which were perpetrated against them, and thereby absolve Israel’s enemies of responsibility.
As I have already said, no war in our time is like the Holocaust or is comparable to the Holocaust.
The use of the Holocaust of the Jewish people as a political tool must cease immediately.”
The Israel Foreign Ministry’s summoned Russian Ambassador to Israel Anatoly Viktorov on Monday to protest the egregious comments by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying that Hitler had “Jewish blood” marking the end of Israel’s effort to somehow stay above the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
Lavrov’s comments came in response to a question by an Italian radio interviewer about how he could call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a Nazi, when Zelensky himself is a Jew. In addition, Lavrov said, “For a long time now we’ve been hearing the wise Jewish people say that the biggest anti-semites are the Jews themselves.”
Bennett, who on Holocaust Remembrance Day last week, declared in a speech at the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem that nothing can be compared to the Holocaust, said it was time to stop using the Holocaust as a political tool.
Israel Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s comments were harsher and less “diplomatic.” Lavrov’s remarks, he said, “are both an unforgivable and outrageous statement as well as a terrible historical error. Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust. The lowest level of racism against Jews is to accuse Jews themselves of antisemitism.”