President Isaac Herzog told Haaretz in an interview published on Wednesday that he was astonished by remarks made this week by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, which included the claim that “even Hitler had Jewish blood.”
In his first response to the affair, Herzog made clear that he expects Lavrov to retract his words and apologize.
“The truth is I read them several times,” he told Haaretz. “At first, I couldn’t believe that they had been uttered by a Russian foreign minister. They made me angry and disgusted. During a week when we are remembering the Holocaust, of all weeks, the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov chooses to spread lies, terrible lies, which smell of antisemitism. I expect him to retract his words and apologize.”
While Herzog said he doesn’t believe that Lavrov’s remarks will harm bilateral relations, they do threaten to cast a cloud over them.
“It’s necessary and proper that he correct those remarks,” Herzog added, noting the crucial contribution of the Red Army in defeating the Nazis.
Lavrov caused an uproar after saying on Sunday that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had Jewish blood.
In an interview with an Italian news channel, Lavrov referred to the fact that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish and said, “In my opinion, Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it doesn’t mean absolutely anything. For some time we have heard from the Jewish people that the biggest antisemites were Jewish.”
On Monday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry announced that it had summoned Russian Ambassador Anatoly Viktorov for “clarification” in response to Lavrov’s comments.
Later in the day, Zelenskyy responded to Lavrov and said that his comments show that Moscow "has forgotten all the lessons of World War II or perhaps never learned them."
"I have no words...No one has heard any denial or any justification from Moscow. All we have from there is silence.... this means that the Russian leadership has forgotten all the lessons of World War II," he said in his nightly video message.
"Or perhaps they have never learned those lessons," he added.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also responded on Monday to Lavrov.
Quoting Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s condemnation of the remarks, Blinken tweeted, “My friend Yair Lapid put it perfectly. It is incumbent on the world to speak out against such vile, dangerous rhetoric and support our Ukrainian partners in the face of the Kremlin’s vicious assault.”