Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, 72, irked Israeli elected officials continuing to push the same disinformation about “de-Nazifying” Ukraine, then even more outrageous, saying Holocaust mastermind Adolf Hiller was part Jewish. Hitler’s ancestral tree has been studied for generations and there’s nothing conclusive about his paternal grandfather, his father Alois, an orphan, never knew. So the mystery Jewish grandfather for Adolf is left to the murky past. But on the excuse used by Russia to invade Ukraine, to de-Nazify the country, it’s more outrageous by the day, especially because Russian disinformation and propaganda seem so primitive for a modern audience. It’s one thing to push improbable ideas in Russia, where the Internet is tightly regulated, it’s another to spread naïve lies to the rest of the world, where access to information is widely available.
Antagonizing Israel over the Holocaust is an easy thing to do, with many elected officials making politically incorrect remarks about the Holocaust, especially Iran, during the days when former President Mahmoud Amadinejad who hosted Holocaust deniers conferences. Western media’s emphasis on Lavrov’s feeble propaganda is designed to give Western governments more impetus to join forces and go to war against the Russian Federation. Israeli knows that the world at large accepts what happened to European Jewry during WW II, with Nazis rounded up Jews like cattle and shipping them off to death camps all over Europe. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Israeli parliament March 20 that Russian President Vladimir Putin was committing genocide against the Ukrainian people. Zelensky’s remarks were equally filled with disinformation and propaganda.
Whether or not war crimes have been committed in Ukraine by Russian forces, that’s a far cry from the systematic, methodical extermination of Jews and other groups during the Nazi reign of terror before and during WW II. Zelensky wants to paint Putin and Hitler 2.0 but the comparison is preposterous. Putin’s prosecuting a war where he seeks to demilitarize Ukraine, something difficult to do because the U.S. and NATO supply Ukraine with unlimited cash and lethal weapons. Putin needs to grab Lavrov by the collar and tell him to shut up. Lavrov’s “de-Nazification” remarks only make a bad situation worse for Russia. No one buys the “de-Nazification” parallel, including members of the Israeli Knesset. When Zelensky said Putin committed genocide against Ukraine, the Knesset told Zelensky he went too far, cheapening the Holocaust, making comparisons to Ukraine
Lavrov tried to explain himself to an Italian TV station, continuing on the de-Nazification excuses. “So when they say ‘How can Nazification exist if we’re Jewish?’ 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 anti-Semites were Jewish,” Lavrov said. Putin needs to give Lavrov the hook because he makes Russian look more feeble every time he speaks. Israeli reactions to Lavrov remarks are not helpful at all, considering it’s a lame excuse. “The Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust,” said Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, overreacting to Lavrov’s comments. Lapid shouldn’t dignify Lavrov’s comments with a response, only to say there are many reasons for the Ukraine War, certainly not the presence of Nazis in Ukraine. Lapid called Lavrov’s remarks “unforgivable and scandalous and a horrible error.”
Ukraine pounced on Lavrov’s Nazi remarks, hoping to make a case for Putin’s genocide in Ukraine. “By trying to rewrite history, Moscow is simply looking for argument to justify the mass murders of Ukrainians,” said presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted. Uraine’s 40, year-old Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Lavov’s remarks exposed the ‘deeply –rooted anti-Semitism of Russian elites.” Lavrov didn’t help Russia’s cause trying to prosecute a war which has very little global support. More feeble excuses given by Lavrov and Putin only make the war effort more difficult. Whether admitted to or not, the Ukraine War has morphed into a proxy war between the U.S. and Russian Federation. President Joe Biden, 79, runs the war from the White House, with the U.S. funding no only the war effort but also paying the civil salaries of the Ukrainian government.
Whatever horrors happen on the Ukraine battlefield, any comparison to Nazi Germany stretched world history to the breaking point. Putin said that de-Nazification of Ukraine was only one small part of the Russian war in Ukraine. As the situation evolved, Putin now fights a determined U.S. proxy war against the Russian Federation. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said April 22 that the aim of the U.S. war in Ukraine was to degrade the Russian military. So references to de-Nazification only antagonize world powers because they clearly don’t apply in Ukraine. Putin admitted April 30 that the war in Ukraine was an inevitable confrontation with the United States. Biden said March 26 in Warsaw, Poland that it was inconceivable Putin could remain in power. Lavrov doesn’t need Nazi excuses he needs only cite the reality that Russia is now in a proxy war with the United States.
