The third month-long Russian special operation in Ukraine, one of the main goals of which was the denazification of the country, echoed unexpectedly in Israel, the Jewish state, the emergence of which on May 14, 1948 was preceded by the extermination of millions of Jews by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
In relations between Israel and Russia, which for many years had a special trusting character and were distinguished by a considerable margin of safety, despite the difference in approaches to a number of delicate problems of international security (the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Iran, Syria), a scandal occurred literally from scratch. .
This was a bolt from the blue, given that over the past three decades, the leaders and diplomats of the two countries have eaten together more than one pood of negotiating salt and in any situation have demonstrated the ability to walk along the knife's edge, seek a common language, understand and respect each other's position.
Successive Israeli prime ministers understood the importance of maintaining a dynamic relationship with Russia, despite the country's allied relations with the United States.
In turn, Moscow has always highly valued relations with Israel, a key player in the Middle East region, considering these relations to be unique in everything, given the thousands of threads that bind our countries and peoples.
Russia's close relationship with Iran, the existential enemy of the Jewish state, and its long-standing contacts with Hamas and Hezbollah, which are proclaimed terrorist groups in Israel, could not overshadow Russian-Israeli cooperation.
More recently, at the end of last December, the anniversary year for Russia and Israel, which celebrated the 30th anniversary of the restoration of diplomatic relations, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid admitted in an interview with the Kommersant newspaper: “The ties between the Jewish people and the Russian people go back centuries.
Jews have lived in Russia for centuries.
The Russian Empire was the cradle of modern Zionism, and the Jews influenced Russian culture and at the same time were influenced by it.
And of course, the Jewish and Russian peoples united in the historical struggle for the fate of mankind during the Second World War.”
Speaking about the potential for cooperation, Yair Lapid noted: “Ties between Russian Jews and more than a million Russian-speaking Israelis provide endless opportunities for interaction in trade, tourism, science and culture.
The dedicated and professional diplomats of both countries continue to work to realize these opportunities.
The leaders of the two states regularly hold open discussions on important issues of national security and regional stability.”
“I will be glad to meet with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the near future,” Yair Lapid said.
And after such a cloudless anniversary year, the May eclipse of 2022 appeared in relations between the two countries.
The starting point was an interview by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with the Italian television company Mediaset, in which he gave his assessment of the spread of Nazism in Ukraine, recalling that neo-Nazism flourished in the country under the current president, a Jew by nationality, Vladimir Zelensky.
The main thesis of Sergei Lavrov was that the very fact that President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky belongs to the Jewish people does not mean at all that the world should turn a blind eye to the crimes committed in Ukraine by the militants of Aidar and other volunteer battalions, whose ideology in the 21st century became Nazism.
“I could 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.
The family has its black sheep, as we say, ”Sergei Lavrov recalled.
Meanwhile, his statement caused a powerful diplomatic earthquake in Israel.
Russian Ambassador Anatoly Viktorov was summoned to the country's Foreign Ministry.
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who recently spoke about how important relations with Russia are for his country and how he personally looks forward to meeting with Sergey Lavrov, commented on the words of his Russian colleague as follows: “These are unforgivable and scandalous statements, a terrible historical mistake, and we expect an apology.
We are working hard to maintain good relations with Russia, but there is a line, and this time the line has been crossed.
The Russian government must apologize to us and to the Jewish people.”
“Hitler was not of Jewish origin, and Jews did not kill themselves during the Holocaust.
The lowest form of racism against the Jews is the accusation of the Jews themselves of anti-Semitism, ”the Israeli minister was indignant.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett also made a tough statement about the inadmissibility of using the Holocaust “as an instrument of political attacks”.
However, what is seditious, terrible, offensive could Sergey Lavrov say in his interview?
Let's discard emotions and once again turn to the source.
Let's start with the fact that Sergei Lavrov never used the word "holocaust" at all and spoke about modern Ukraine.
Secondly, the reaction to the words of Sergei Lavrov, who admitted that Hitler could have Jewish blood, is incomprehensible.
Whether Hitler had Jewish ancestors or not, no one knows for sure - this topic is not closed and remains one of the mysteries of history.
Thirdly, it is difficult to understand the reaction to the words of Sergei Lavrov that one can find ardent anti-Semites among the Jews.
But who does not know this - this is a statement of the obvious!
In the article “Anti-Semitic Jews”, the researcher Lev Madorsky writes about the attitude of anti-Semitic Jews towards Jews as follows: “Oddly enough, this incomprehensible and even mysterious phenomenon, when a person hates his own kind, in other words, hates himself, is very rarely."
The main anti-Semitic Jew in world history was the grandson of two rabbis, Karl Marx, who wrote about Jews in the article “On the Jewish Question” and a letter to Engels in such a way that it is better not to quote it and push the classic of Marxism into the bowels of the closet to hell.
And finally, the most important thing is about Ukraine, since Sergey Lavrov’s interview was not intended to continue endless historical discussions, but to attempt a tough, impartial analysis of how it could happen that under the Jewish President Zelensky, who learned how to deftly manipulate its origin, Ukraine finally became the main European and world hotbed of neo-Nazism.
“History is not the past in the past, but the past in the present,” said American-British poet Thomas Stearns Eliot, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature the year the State of Israel was founded.
Responding to the inexplicable storm that the words of Sergei Lavrov caused in Israel, the Russian Foreign Ministry drew attention to the very “past in the present,” if we follow Eliot’s definition.
Namely, they pointed to the connection between the past and the present, shedding light on the genesis of modern Ukrainian Nazism.
“In Poland and other countries of Eastern Europe, the Germans appointed Jewish industrialists as heads of ghettos and Jewish councils (Judenrats), some of them are remembered for absolutely monstrous deeds.
<...> At the same time, the historical tragedy lies in the fact that if during the Second World War some Jews were forced to participate in crimes, then Volodymyr Zelensky, who speculates on his roots, does this quite consciously and quite voluntarily.
He hides behind his origin and covers with it natural neo-Nazis, spiritual and blood heirs of the executioners of his people, ”the Russian diplomatic department said in a statement.
However, the matter is not only in Vladimir Zelensky.
At the peak of this inexplicable scandal, it's time to remember that far from the last role in the fate and political career of Volodymyr Zelensky was played by the Ukrainian billionaire and he is also the president of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine (UJCU), who also has an Israeli passport, Igor Kolomoisky.
In 2018, when it was decided that his protégé Volodymyr Zelensky would run for president, he demonstrated what sparkling Jewish humor is.
Answering a journalist’s question why a comedian is going to the presidency of Ukraine, Igor Kolomoisky noted: “Why is a clown worse than a confectioner?”
— by biting Volodymyr Zelensky's predecessor as president, Petro Poroshenko.
It was Kolomoisky who stood at the origins of the creation and sponsored the neo-Nazi volunteer battalions, which declared themselves in 2014 - then the war in the Donbass was just beginning.
Declaring himself as a believer, a Hasid who “observes the Sabbath,” Igor Kolomoisky considers himself an ardent “political Ukrainian.”
And he is by no means alone in this.
Here is the confession of the head of the board of the UJCU, the rabbi of the city of Dnipro, Shmuel Kaminetsky, who in absentia dots the i's in the dispute about whether Sergey Lavrov could have mortally offended someone with his assessments.
“Genuine Jewish identity and Ukrainian nationalism not only combine, but complement each other,” Shmuel Kaminetsky once admitted.
And in this situation, when it was about present-day Ukraine, Israel suddenly became mortally offended at the words of Sergei Lavrov, began to recall the history of the Second World War, the Holocaust and argue that there can be no Nazism in Ukraine, since, they say, the country is led by Jewish President!
That is, for some reason, they turned a blind eye to the crimes of the Nazi battalions, armed with the money of a Jewish oligarch, a “political Ukrainian” and a former mentor of the current “clown president”.
The question is why?
Does it hurt your eyes?
But then it turns out that it is Israel itself with all this, unexpectedly for all of us, its friends in Russia, that got into history.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.