JAKARTA - Israel has condemned the statement by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had Jewish origins, calling it an unforgivable lie and demeaning the Nazi Holocaust.
It didn't take long for Israel's Foreign Ministry to summon Russia's ambassador to the country and demand an apology.
"Such lies are meant to accuse the Jews themselves of the most horrific crimes in history committed against them," Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement.
"The use of the Jewish Holocaust for political purposes must stop immediately," said Prime Minister Bennett.
Foreign Minister Lavrov made the remarks on Italian television on Sunday, when he was asked why Russia said it needed to 'denazify' Ukraine, if the country's president himself, Volodymyr Zelensky, was a Jew.
"When they say 'What kind of Naziification is this if we are Jews', I think Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it doesn't mean anything," Foreign Minister Lavrov told the Rete 4 channel, speaking through an Italian translator.
"For a long time we have heard wise Jews say, the greatest anti-Semites are the Jews themselves," he added.
Separately, Dani Dayan, chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust, said the Russian minister's remarks were "an insult and a crushing blow to the true victims of Nazism".
Speaking on Kan radio, Dayan said Foreign Minister Lavrov was spreading "anti-Semitic conspiracy theories with no basis in fact".
The identity of one of Hitler's grandfathers is unknown but there has been some speculation, never supported by any evidence, that he may have been a Jew.
There was no immediate response for comment from the Russian embassy to Israel or from Foreign Minister Lavrov in Moscow.
Meanwhile, Kyiv condemned Lavrov's words, saying his "despicable remarks" offended Zelensky, Israel, Ukraine and Jews.
"More broadly, they show Russia today is full of hatred towards other countries," Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted.
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, whose grandfather died in the Holocaust, said accusing Jews of being anti-Semitic was "the most basic level of racism". He also dismissed Lavrov's statement that pro-Nazi elements controlled the Ukrainian government and military.
"Ukraine is not a Nazi. Only the Nazis are Nazis and only those who are dealing with the systematic destruction of the Jewish people," Foreign Minister Lapid told news site YNet.
It is known that Israel has expressed repeated support for Ukraine, following the Russian invasion in February. But wary of strained relations with Russia, rulers in neighboring Syria have initially avoided direct criticism of Moscow and have not imposed formal sanctions on the Russian oligarchs.
However, relations have become more strained, with Foreign Minister Lapid last month accusing Russia of war crimes in Ukraine. However, the Ukrainian president has also come under criticism in Israel by seeking analogies between his country's conflict and the Second World War.
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