https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/1538625417342357504
Why is this upsurge in public Russian antisemitism happening now? What on earth does the war in Ukraine have to do with supposed Jewish conspiracies and Israeli neo-Nazis?
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2022-06-16/ty-article-opinion/.premium/jewish-conspiracies-israeli-neo-nazis-is-it-time-to-leave-russia/00000181-6d43-d82b-a3ab-edff83150000
'Jewish Conspiracies,' 'Israeli neo-Nazis': Is It Time to Leave Russia?
It's no coincidence that state-sanctioned expressions of antisemitism are on the rise in Russia these days. The Ukraine war has revived an antique form of far-right nationalism, in which the Jews have always been the enemy
Russia’s war against Ukraine and its conflict with the West have taken a turn toward antisemitism. It has been decades since so many attacks on Jews and Israel have appeared in the Russian press, television, social media and official pronouncements. This is in part a by-product of the fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish, with the Russian media seeking to smear Zelenskyy in any and all ways possible. But the roots of this upswing in public antisemitism are much deeper, and its consequences are larger.
At the top of the list of incidents is the interview that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave to an Italian television journalist in early May. Lavrov was asked how he could claim that Ukraine was governed by a Nazi regime when its president, Zelenskyy, was Jewish. Lavrov responded that “Hitler also had Jewish blood” and that “the most ardent antisemites are as a rule Jewish.” His comments drew widespread condemnation globally and sparked a brief crisis in Russian-Israeli relations. Many pointed out that blaming the Holocaust and antisemitism on Jews was itself crudely antisemitic. It took an alleged telephone apology by President Vladimir Putin to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to calm the storm.
Lavrov’s comments were not off-the-cuff improvisations. Observers had noted Zelenskyy’s Jewishness and its incongruity with the Russian claims regarding Ukraine’s supposed Nazism since the war began on February 24. The Russian Foreign Ministry had more than two months to formulate a response, and this was it. Lavrov was articulating a prepared official position.
Lavrov’s remarks strike us as bizarre only because we assume that the Russian foreign minister was addressing a Western audience. In fact, Lavrov and other Russian officials know that they have lost Western public opinion, and are not really trying to win it back. Lavrov may have been speaking with an Italian, but his remarks were intended mainly for a domestic Russian audience. They were a signal that the lexicon of the Russian far right – a motley crew of monarchists, Stalinists and imperialists who before the war languished on the margins of public life – a lexicon that includes the berating and vilifying of Jews, was now endorsed as mainstream Russian discourse.
As if to drive home this point, the spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, doubled down on Lavrov’s argument. She produced a brief historical “study” intended to show that Jews had collaborated with the Nazis in perpetrating the Holocaust. It stated that the heads of the Nazi-imposed ghettoes and Jewish councils (Judenraten) had cooperated with the Germans in sending Jews to their deaths. Zakharova characterized the official Israeli condemnation of Lavrov’s remarks as “anti-historical.” She also criticized Israel for supporting “the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine,” and warned that Israeli mercenaries were fighting alongside the allegedly neo-Nazi Azov Brigade. In other words, Zelenskyy and the Israeli fighters in Ukraine were continuing the tradition of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis.
There was nothing new in the Russian Foreign Ministry’s argument. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was a staple of Soviet anti-Zionist literature to claim that Zionists had collaborated with the Nazis. Accordingly, the State of Israel was the heir to Nazi Germany. One of the classics of this genre of writing, “Fascism Under the Blue Star” (Moscow, 1971), proclaimed: “The kapos of the death camps and the special police in the ghettos were recruited by the Gestapo from among the Zionists. […] The tragedy of Babi Yar [the mass murder site outside Kyiv] will remain forever an embodiment not only of Nazi cannibalism, but also of the indelible disgrace of their accomplices and successors, the Zionists.” The Russian Foreign Ministry has revived this ugly myth from a half-century ago, with one change. It has replaced the word “Zionists” with open use of the word “Jews.”
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/05/opinions/sergey-lavrov-hitler-comments-ukraine-kauders/index.html
Opinion: Let's set the record straight on Lavrov's Hitler comments
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's comments on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's Jewish identity have occasioned shock, dismay, and outrage. In an interview on Italian television, Lavrov defended his country's portrayal of Ukraine as a "Nazi" state, Zelensky's background notwithstanding. "So what if Zelensky is Jewish?" he asked. "The fact does not negate the Nazi elements in Ukraine." Indeed, Hitler himself had "Jewish blood," and "the most ardent antisemites are usually Jews," he said.
The show's host, not unexpectedly, declined to challenge these assertions, delegating this task to other journalists, international politicians and the public at large.
Some of the reactions have been predictable. Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted that "today's Russia is full of hatred towards other nations." US State Department spokesman Ned Price condemned Lavrov's "insidious lies." Germany's government spokesman Steffen Hebenstreit suggested that such "absurd" propaganda required no further comment.
In Israel, Lavrov's provocations touched a particularly raw nerve, prompting the country's leaders to abandon their diplomatic balancing act. Foreign Minister Yair Lapid dismissed the statements as both inexcusable and historically erroneous. "The Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust," he said, adding that it was the "lowest level of racism against Jews to blame Jews themselves for antisemitism." Dani Dayan, head of Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Center Yad Vashem, denounced Lavrov's account as "absurd, delusional, dangerous and deserving of condemnation."
(On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's office said Russian President Vladimir Putin had apologized for Lavrov's comments.)
Whatever Lavrov's intentions, it is important to counter his version of events. There are three issues at stake: first, his depiction of Ukraine; second, his characterization of Hitler; and third, his conception of Jewish (or any other) identity.
Antisemitism is not unknown to modern Ukraine. Tens of thousands of Jews lost their lives after World War I, as antisemitic violence became an "acceptable response to the excesses of Bolshevism." Ukrainians were not alone in perpetrating these crimes: Poles and White Russian troops were equally implicated. Pogroms and mass murder returned with a vengeance two decades later.
Anticipating the re-establishment of an independent state, nationalists in western Ukraine collaborated with the Nazis, sometimes as members of the auxiliary police force, sometimes as concentration camp guards. Again, they were not unique in taking advantage of German advances against the Soviet Union.
Present-day Ukraine has its fair share of right-wing extremism. Militias have attacked anti-fascist demonstrators and municipal politicians, as well as foreign students and Roma. Still, in the country's 2019 parliamentary election, a coalition of far-right parties secured just over 2% of the vote, a figure that pales in comparison with the successes of racists elsewhere in Western and Eastern Europe.
As much as Russian collective memory may have prejudiced Lavrov's depiction of Ukraine, it is evident that so-called "denazification" is merely a pretext to "de-Ukrainize" a territory that, for Lavrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin alike, lacks historical legitimacy.
Hitler was not Jewish. To this day, his paternal grandfather is unknown, which has led some to speculate without any evidence that the dictator's mysterious ancestor may have been Jewish – and Hitler's antisemitism a form of self-loathing that induced him to exterminate European Jewry.
According to the legend, Adolf's grandmother, Maria Schicklgruber, worked as a cook for the Frankenbergers of Graz, where she was impregnated by a family member, possibly the 19-year-old son. As tales go, this one is especially fantastic. There is no evidence that Maria ever worked or lived in Graz. There is no proof that a Frankenberger family resided there. And there is certainly no documentation of a Jewish Frankenberger household in Graz.
Indeed, Jews had been expelled from the city in the fifteenth century, only to be allowed to return decades after the alleged Schicklgruber-Frankenberger affair. The source of the legend should have raised eyebrows at the outset.
Hans Frank, the notorious Governor-General of Nazi-occupied Polish territory, concocted the story as part of his memoirs while awaiting execution in Nuremberg. The fabrication included so many other factual errors that no serious historian has ever considered Frank's record reliable.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/559210-black-secret-service-agent-told-trump-it-was-offensive-to-hold-rally
>Israeli mercenaries were fighting alongside the allegedly neo-Nazi Azov Brigade. In other words, Zelenskyy and the Israeli fighters in Ukraine were continuing the tradition of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis.
>To this day, his paternal grandfather is unknown, which has led some to speculate without any evidence that the dictator's mysterious ancestor may have been Jewish.