Russia calls comments by Lapid ‘anti-historical,’ defends Lavrov’s suggestion the Nazi leader had Jewish blood, claiming some Jews in Holocaust did ‘absolutely monstrous deeds’
By AMY SPIRO , TOI
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (left) attends a press conference in Moscow on April 27, 2022 and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid addresses a press conference in Casablanca, on August 12, 2021. (Yuri KOCHETKOV / various sources / AFP)
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that Israel supports the “neo-Nazi regime” in Ukraine, as tensions between Moscow and Jerusalem ratcheted up following Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s incendiary remarks on the Holocaust earlier this week.
In a statement on Tuesday, Russia accused Foreign Minister Yair Lapid of making “anti-historical statements” that “largely explain why the current Israeli government supports the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv.”
The statement cited “examples of cooperation between Jews and the Nazis” during the Holocaust, noting the Judenrat councils formed in many Jewish communities and those who ran them, “some of whom are remembered for absolutely monstrous deeds.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry claimed that while during the Holocaust “some Jews were forced to participate in crimes,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, “does this quite consciously and quite voluntarily.” The statement also claimed that Ukraine is currently home to “the most extreme antisemitism.”<
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Moscow accused Zelensky of “hiding behind his origins” while he consorts with neo-Nazis and the “spiritual and blood heirs of the executioners of his people.”
Israel — along with many Western nations — harshly criticized Lavrov for comments made on Sunday claiming that “Hitler also had Jewish blood” and that “some of the worst antisemites are Jews.” Lavrov made the remarks in an interview with an Italian news outlet while attempting to justify the oft-repeated Russian talking point that it invaded Ukraine in an effort to “de-Nazify” a country led by a Jewish president.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks during a joint news conference with International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi in Kyiv, Ukraine, April 26, 2022. (AP/Efrem Lukatsky)<
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In remarks Tuesday, Zelensky reacted to Lavrov’s statements, saying: “These words mean that Russia’s top diplomat is blaming the Jewish people for Nazi crimes,” he said. “No words.”
Russian Ambassador to Israel Anatoly Viktorov was summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Monday for a discussion on the comments, which Lapid called “unforgivable.”
Lapid said Tuesday morning that the Russian government should apologize to Jews and to Holocaust victims for Lavrov’s comments. But Moscow’s statement on Tuesday showed Russia is instead more likely to escalate the rhetoric between the nations as ties have grown increasingly strained in recent weeks.
Early on in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Israel sought to walk a diplomatic tightrope between Moscow and Kyiv, preserving relations with both of its allies and offering to broker talks. But more recently, Jerusalem has turned toward supporting Ukraine, denouncing Russia for committing apparent war crimes and sending helmets and flak jackets to Ukraine, reversing an earlier policy of not supplying military aid.
In an interview with Kan public radio on Tuesday morning, Lapid said that Russia’s envoy had been subjected to a “tough conversation” after being summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Monday, “since it is unforgivable, unforgivable to blame Jews for their own Holocaust.
“Hitler was not Jewish and Jews did not murder my grandfather in Mauthausen,” he said. “The Nazis did it, and all of these comparisons to the Nazis are unforgivable and infuriating.”
Lapid added that Russia “needs to apologize to the Jews, to the memory of those who were killed.” He suggested that Lavrov “read a history book” instead of spreading false “antisemitic rumors.”
Russian Ambassador to Israel Anatoly Viktorov speaks at a press conference at the Russian Consulate in Tel Aviv, on March 3, 2022. (Avshalom Sassoni??/Flash90)<
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The foreign minister said he could not “rule out” the possibility that Lavrov’s comments were made in response to Lapid’s own statements accusing Russia of war crimes amid its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
According to a Haaretz report on Tuesday, Israel is weighing expanding its military assistance to Ukraine.
After weeks of declining to supply Ukraine with military aid, Israel has amended its policy recently, first agreeing to send helmets and flak jackets to emergency workers in Ukraine, and last week sending an official Defense Ministry representative to US-led talks in Germany on equipping Ukraine.
According to a diplomatic official cited in Haaretz, Israel will not consider sending offensive arms or advanced defensive technology, such as the Iron Dome anti-missile system, but will attempt to find equipment that can be donated without sparking a crisis with Moscow.
Viktorov, the Russian ambassador, said last month that if Israel supplies Ukraine with military equipment, Moscow “will respond accordingly.”
Moscow has repeatedly sought to justify its invasion of Ukraine by claiming that it is working to counter neo-Nazi forces in the country, something largely dismissed by most Western nations.
AFP contributed to this report.
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@SEBASTIEN-
I distinctly recall reading his account of the Hebron massacre. And I’m pretty sure that one of the books I have is “Days Of Our Years.” I always thought it was an odd title. I think also I read that he interviewed Haj el Amin. in Jerusalem.
I don’t recall the burnt cork episode, and that account must have been written many ears ago, as I was all over the Dome AND the Aksa, in the mid 1970s, with no problems and ther were others wandering around as well; -as I’ve posted here even recently..
Trust you to dig out something that is of interest to me.
“Dutch Journalist’s First-Person Account of the Hebron Massacre
Dutch journalist Pierre Van Paassen saw the bodies and the blood when he visited Hebron after the massacre.”
“Pierre Van Paassen was a non-Jewish advocate for Zionism. He authored several books on the Land of Israel and the Jewish people including The Forgotten Ally, a book published during World War II that advocated for Jewish rights and decried the Nazis. He also co-authored The Battle for Jerusalem in 1941 with Zev Jabotinsky, John Henry Patterson, and Josiah Wedgwood. Today, a street in Jerusalem is named in his honor.
He visited Hebron after the massacre. The following is from A Pilgrim’s Vow by Pierre van Paassen (New York: Dial Press, 1956)….”
http://en.hebron.org.il/history/199
“…From his earliest travels to Palestine in 1925, he saw and developed a regard for the work of the early Jewish immigrants to improve the area’s agriculture and industry. Later he became one of the first non-Jews in America to write favorably about the campaign to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine, and remained a Zionist supporter afterwards. But fundamentally, Van Paassen was a Christian Democratic Socialist concerned, as he put it in his autobiographical Days of Our Years, with the enduring struggle for justice for ordinary individuals. He was a staunch opponent of fascism in Italy, Germany and France from the 1920s, reinforced by the ten days he spent as a prisoner in the Dachau Concentration Camp in late March 1933. His activities as a correspondent brought “expulsion from France by Pierre Laval, from Germany by Joseph Goebbels and from Eritrea by Count Ciano.”[2]
In 1933 Van Paassen traveled incognito to the Dome of the Rock, a famous Islamic shrine in Jerusalem. He was accompanied by a British Intelligence officer, and both smeared their faces and hands with burnt cork to give them an Arab appearance. They also wore long white garments to give them a “Hadjihs” appearance. Their evasiveness was a necessity, for nonbelievers were (and still are) not allowed in areas that are considered to be the holiest places in the world of Islam. The purpose of their venture was to get an inside look at the radical movement by listening to what the Mullahs were preaching in regards to the political turmoil that was taking place in then British controlled Palestine.[3] Three years later The Great Uprising took form. This redoubled political violence was in part planned by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, whom Van Paassen had interviewed in 1929 about his incitement of the bloody uprising that year against the Jews in Palestine.[4]…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_van_Paassen
L’esprit descalier: I mentioned Yaacov Sverdlov, the highest ranking Jew in the Bolshevik Party and a key architect of the Great October Revolution (coup d’etat, really) not to mention the red terror that followed who is almost never mentioned today or since, for that matter.
As we emerge from a global pandemic of our own a hundred twenty-five years later, I just noticed the irony. Sverdlov died in 1918.
Of the Spanish flu.
Wikipedia
He should be better known. His books should be in print, most are not.
@Edgar War correspondant and Unitarian Minister. Brilliant Analyst. He predicted Munich in 1936 and Obama in 1942! Though in 2042.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_van_Paassen
@ Edgar Yes, he wrote “The Forgotten Ally” which I recommended earlier in this thread to show how the Jews of the Yishuv, now Israel, actually won the war for the British in North Africa. I have several of his books. I don’t have the one he co-wrote with Jabotinsky.
Did you know he predicted that a century from his time, America would have a Black Socialist President? He was only off by a few years.
@SEBASTIEN-
I have nothing to add to this discussion, except to say that you mentioned a writer of whose books I have several. I haven’t thought of him for many years, but I DO know he was some sort of Christian clergyman, and a strong Zionist, before it became popular for Christians to be so. A wonderful, most interesting writer. I read his books several times over enjoying every word. A couple were autobiographical.
I refer to Pierre Van Passen, an absolutely great writer. You might also say he was an explorer and adventurer. The books I have by him, strangely are all outsize, much bigger than usual, and with many more pages also. But every word a gem. I’m embarrassed that I had forgotten him.
“I am not arguing that Jews owe anyone human anything”
https://youtu.be/Y2XVPryUBMg
@Sebastien Zorn
Not quite.
The West (mainly the British) was appeasing Hitler in order to give him “a free hand in the East” so he could later attack the Soviet Union (I read a whole lecture on the subject by a historian online years ago, and there is also a book online about it with documents on every page).
The first country to sign a pact with Hitler’s Germany was Poland (in 1934), and Poland in 1938 chopped off a piece of Czechoslovakia after Munich.
The USSR tried to make a defense pact with France and Britain but the negotiations failed because Poland refused to let the Soviet military enter its territory under any circumstances.
The Soviets knew they were going to be attacked, and they also knew that they wouldn’t have time to prepare, so their best strategy was to push their borders as far to the West as possible and do a replay of the 1812 Napoleonic war (they also knew it would result in huge casualties for them in the beginning).
This strategy resulted in the signing of the non-aggression pact with Hitler’s Germany in 1939 and dividing Poland, taking the Western Ukraine and Belorussia, etc.
This also resulted in having to present Germany for 2 years to the Soviet public as an ally which messed things up in the minds of the public when the USSR was attacked by Germany in 1941.
I am not arguing that Jews owe anyone human anything
But [emphasis mine]:
Lend-Lease:
I already mentioned the amounts of the Lend-Lease help supplied by the US to different countries, and that the USSR received 1/5 of the total (slightly more than 1/3 of the amount received by the United Kingdom).
This was helpful but not decisive – if the Soviets hadn’t transferred their manufacturing and workforce to the East and reestablished the factories there when the war started, they couldn’t have continued the war based on the Lend-Lease amount alone.
It took the Allies a year to get from the French coast to Germany, and, in parallel, a year to conquer the south of Italy, this is considering the fact that the Germans much preferred surrendering to the Americans than to the Russians.
@Reader
http://new.wymaninstitute.org/2016/02/revisiting
-fdrs-unfunny-joke-about-jews/
After the pogroms of 1905 and 6, Stalin joked about the need for a pogrom within the party in one of his essays.
I’m sure they had a good laugh together. Allies, you know? But not ours.
That’s why permanent international bodies like the UN are inherently flawed and Globalism can only be an exploitative racket – fun Star Trek scenarios, notwithstanding. They should be abolished.
The only reason Germany didn’t drop chemical weapons on Soviet troops is that FDR threatened to use them on German towns and cities in retaliation. When the Bergson group asked him to make the same threat on behalf of the Jews being gassed, they were told by the generals – they never got to speak to his highness – that the Jews weren’t an Ally not having a state of their own and they would probably have to carry through on the threat, so no.
Nobody bombed the tracks to the camps of the crematoria, not Russia either.
Both the Soviet Union and the West appeased Hitler in the 30s. To his credit, Trotsky did call for the Allies to invade Germany to enforce the terms of the Versaille Treaty in 1933 but he had no influence.
Not that any of this is really relevant to the Jews owe Russia argument. States have interests not morals and they only owe a debt to their own citizens. Only Israel gets guilt tripped like this, though it was tried on Trump about the Kurds, crying, they’re our allies.
@Reader Check out “The Forgotten Ally” by Pierre Van Paassen. Both Amazon and Barnes and Noble have it as ebooks for a dollar or two though you can order the book for more.
Lend-Lease Soviet Union
Totaling $11.3 billion, or $180 billion in today’s currency, the Lend-Lease Act of the United States supplied needed goods to the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945 in support of what Stalin described to Roosevelt as the “enormous and difficult fight against the common enemy — bloodthirsty Hitlerism.”May 10, 2020
US Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union, 1941-1945 – US Embassy …https://ru.usembassy.gov › world-war-ii-allies-u-s-lend-l…
And Germany was fighting a three front war, the US in France and Italy, the British with the Jewish legion embedded that actually won it for them in North Africa.
@Sebastien Zorn
Most of the Lend-Lease went to the British:
Americans fought the Japanese until the D-Day in June of 1944.
The British were in the ME or around there somewhere?
The Soviet Army in June-August 1944:
https://www.historynet.com/operation-bagration-soviet-offensive-of-1944/
@Sebastien Zorn
Has it occurred to you that this was prepalnned to give a strong warning to Israel to remain neutral?
Lavrov is a very skilled diplomat and I find it hard to believe that he would let loose with these kinds of statements without thinking it over or without a purpose?
If “taking a stand” works so well, then why does Israel keep signing all those suicidal agreements (Oslo, etc.) without taking a stand?
@Reader It was a combined effort including the Jews of the Yishuv Amercan lend-lease and British and American troops in different theaters. Nobody did it for the Jews, other than our own people in Palestine and the Allied armies and a handful of friends in various countries. The Soviets didn’t even acknowledge the Holocaust. Most of the Jews in occupied Europe WERE NOT SAVED. Especially, the Baltic states.
I would like to add something to Felix’s comment.
If Russia had not defeated Germany, then Nazi forces would advance further East into the Soviet territory, slaughter the remaining couple of million Jews there, continue according to the Generalplan OST with the rest of the population, including the Russian-loathing Poles, sign a peace treaty with the US and Great Britain (and possibly France), divide the territory among these most civilized and Aryan countries, and continue “solving the Jewish question” just as murderously in the rest of the world including the US and Britain.
Let’s keep in mind the Africans and the others who would be considered free game also.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/327028
Enough already with the doom and gloom scenarios. Am I the only one here who takes the trouble to read ISRAELI papers?
See? Israel took a stand and Russia backed off. That’s the way it works. That’s what Ben Gurion did with the US with similar results more than once.
@Felix
https://youtu.be/YOvbUu0OlbQ