Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s
remark on Nazi Germany dictator Adolf Hitler had “Jewish blood” on Sunday left Israel fuming.

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Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid
issued a statement calling Lavrov’s statement a “historical error”.

“Foreign Minister Lavrov’s remarks are
both an unforgivable and outrageous statement as well as a terrible historical
error,” Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said on Monday.

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“Jews did not murder themselves in the
Holocaust. The lowest level of racism against Jews is to accuse Jews themselves
of anti-Semitism.”

Lavrov made the comments on
Italian television on Sunday, claiming that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is to
“de-Nazify” the country.

He rubbished the fact that Ukraine’s
President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish.

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“He (Zelensky) puts forward an argument:
what kind of Nazism can they have if he is a Jew. I may be wrong, but Hitler
also had Jewish blood. It means absolutely nothing. The wise Jewish people say
that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews,” Lavrov said.

In response to Lavrov’s comments,
Israel’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian Ambassador to Israel on Monday.

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Dani Dayan, who chairs the Yad Vashem
Holocaust remembrance site in Israel, said it was “completely unfounded” to say
Hitler was of Jewish descent. And he slammed Russia’s labelling of Ukrainians
as Nazis.

“Equally serious is calling the
Ukrainians in general, and President Zelensky in particular, Nazis. This, among
other things, is a complete distortion of the history and a serious affront to
the victims of Nazism,” Dayan said on Twitter.

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Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba
said the remarks made by his Russian counterpart were “heinous.”

“FM Lavrov could not help hiding
the deeply-rooted antisemitism of the Russian elites,” Kuleba said Monday
on his official Twitter account.

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“His heinous remarks are offensive
to President (Zelensky), Ukraine, Israel, and the Jewish people. More broadly,
they demonstrate that today’s Russia is full of hatred towards other
nations.”