A Hitler comparison by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is making waves in Israel.

Israel's Foreign Minister Jair Lapid called the Russian ambassador to a "clarification meeting" on Monday.

In an interview, Lavrov compared the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with Adolf Hitler - and justified this with the claim that Hitler, like Zelenskyy, was a Jew.

According to Russian propaganda, “Nazis” are said to be in power in Kyiv.

Christian Meier

Political correspondent for the Middle East and Northeast Africa.

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Frederick Smith

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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Lapid called Lavrov's comments "unforgivable and scandalous" and a "terrible historical error".

He's expecting an apology.

"The Jews did not murder themselves during the Holocaust," Israel's foreign minister said.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the aim of "these kinds of lies" is to blame the Jews themselves for the most horrible crimes in history that have been perpetrated against them.

Israel initially avoided criticism of Moscow

Lavrov said in an interview with the Italian television channel Mediaset that Zelenskyy argued what kind of "Nazification" there should be in Ukraine "if he is a Jew.

I may be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood.

That means absolutely nothing.

The wise Jewish people say that the most zealous anti-Semites are usually Jews.” Lavrov added a proverb literally translated as “No family without a freak” and used to mean “Every family has its black sheep.”

Lavrov's comments are based on Russian efforts to portray all Ukrainian enemies as "Nazis".

At the beginning of his “special military operation”, as he calls the war against Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that one of the goals was to “denazify” the country.

The sharp Israeli reaction to Lavrov's statement is also significant given the fact that the Israeli government was initially hesitant to clearly name Russia's attack on Ukraine.

Israel has good relations with Moscow and relies on Putin's approval and coordination with the Russian military in Syria when attacking forces there loyal to Iran.

At the same time, officials in Israel are striving to ward off comparisons to the Holocaust and the Nazi era - comparisons that also recur in the country's own political discourse.

Just a few days ago, in a speech on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Bennett emphasized that the genocide of the Jews of Europe was being compared more and more often with other events.

But "no event in history, gruesome as it may have been, compares to the Holocaust," Bennett said.

"Never, in any place or at any time, has a people set about the annihilation of another people in such a planned, systematic and indifferent manner, out of an absolute ideology and not out of selfishness."

This was understood as a reference to the Russian Nazi accusations against Ukraine on the one hand and to Zelenskyy's statements on the other.

In a speech to the Knesset in mid-March, for example, he linked the Russian attack on his country with Hitler's "final solution".