Russia has accused Israel of supporting the “neo-Nazi regime” in Kyiv as it escalates a diplomatic row with one of the few close US allies that decided not to join in sanctions against the Kremlin or send lethal military aid to Ukraine.
The dispute over remarks by Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who said in an interview that Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood” and that the “most rabid antisemites tend to be Jews”, has threatened to unsettle Israel’s careful position over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
On Monday, Israel summoned Russia’s ambassador to the foreign ministry and its foreign minister, Yair Lapid, called Lavrov’s remarks “unforgivable and outrageous … as well as a terrible historical error.”
Lapid wrote: “Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust. The lowest level of racism against Jews is to accuse Jews themselves of antisemitism.”
On Tuesday, Russia’s foreign ministry doubled down on Lavrov’s words, accusing Lapid of making “antihistorical” remarks about the Holocaust that “largely explain the course of the current Israeli government in supporting the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv.
“Unfortunately, history knows tragic examples of Jewish cooperation with the Nazis,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.
The Hitler comments appear to have added to the pressure for Israel to abandon its attempts to maintain a neutral stance on the Russian war in Ukraine, a position that has angered its US allies.
Since the war broke out, Israel has set up a field hospital in western Ukraine, provided humanitarian supplies, and protective vests and helmets for the Ukrainian army. It has so far refrained from sending more substantial military aid or imposing sanctions on Russia. Israel has a delicate relationship with Russia, as both have military interests in Syria.
As the conflict drags on and more evidence of atrocities committed by Russian forces against civilians has come to light, Israeli criticism has become more vocal, with Lapid last month accusing Russia of war crimes.
In an interview with Ynet published on Monday evening, he said of his counterpart’s allegations: “That angers me not only as foreign minister but also as the son of my father, who was in the ghetto in Budapest. It wasn’t Jews who put him in the ghetto. The Nazis put him there. The Nazis persecuted the Jews and killed 6 million Jews. The Ukrainians aren’t Nazis, only the Nazis were Nazis.”
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Tuesday that military and political establishments were considering bolstering assistance to Ukraine in the wake of the diplomatic row. The list of items that can be sent to Ukraine will be reviewed in the next few days, the newspaper said.
But according to a quoted source in the Haaretz report, Israel will shy away from sending advanced weaponry or defensive technology, such as the missile defence systems President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has asked the Knesset to supply. New shipments of military equipment are likely to be “symbolic”, the source said, in keeping with Israel’s existing policy of avoiding antagonising Moscow.
Little has surfaced of what was discussed during Monday’s almost unprecedented summoning of the Russian ambassador, Anatoly Viktorov, for a clarification meeting on Lavrov’s incendiary comments.
“The Israeli position was made clear in the meeting and the parties agreed that no further details would be published,” an unnamed official told local media on Tuesday, in what appeared to be an attempt to let the matter lie.
Israel’s western allies have been pressuring the country to increase its support for Ukraine since the war broke out in February. Officials are also reportedly worried that Israel’s continued balancing act between Russia and the west could hurt the arms industry by sending the signal that Israel could also sit out future conflicts.
Analysts said Lavrov’s inflammatory remarks, which threatened to antagonise one of the few western countries still willing to engage with Russia, were indicative of the “radicalisation” of much of the Russian government and the lack of coherency to its goals in Ukraine.
“Diplomacy as a skill, as an art collapsed with everything else on February 24th,” said Alexander Baunov, a Russian political analyst who previously served as a diplomat. There are “no rules, no skills, no rationality … nothing is as usual. They are all disoriented in this new world, including people like Lavrov, Putin himself, they don’t know how to speak, what is allowed and what is not.
“They are concentrated on one task which is to justify the thing they have done which is not going as is expected,” he said, referring to the invasion of Ukraine. “And they still have to justify it.”
