Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov just made Israel’s precarious balancing act on the war in Ukraine harder.
In an interview with Italian television, Lavrov was asked how Russia could claim it invaded Ukraine to “denazify” the country when its democratically elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was Jewish. Lavrov defended the grotesque “denazify” lie with an even more grotesque lie. “So what if Zelensky is Jewish?” he said. “That fact does not negate the Nazi elements in Ukraine. I believe that Hitler also had Jewish blood . . . some of the worst anti-Semites are Jewish.”
The Israeli government was outraged. As Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett put it, Lavrov had blamed “the Jews themselves for the most terrible crimes in history that were committed against them.” To demonstrate its anger, and send an unmistakable message that such remarks, especially coming from Russia’s top diplomat, crossed a red line, Israel increased military aid and other assistance to Ukraine.
Actually, nothing like that happened. Despite its outrage, all that the Israel government did was to summon the Russian ambassador to the Israel foreign ministry for a scolding and demand an “apology,” as though this was just an unfortunate diplomatic gaffe. Thus far no Russian apology has been forthcoming.
Lavrov’s comment is one for the ages — that is, the ages of damaging, anti-Semitic “blood libels” against the Jewish people such as the fabricated “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which originated in Russia and claimed that Jews used the blood of Christian children for the Feast of Passover.
Asking Russia to apologize for Lavrov’s statement, which came just after Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Week and in the midst of rising anti-Semitism around the world, implies a let “bygones be bygones” forgiveness, even though Lavrov’s remark was, as Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid put it, “unforgivable.”
A Russian apology, in any event, is worthless. Russia is the “Lies Are Us” of nations whose government lies even when there is no need to lie. If you believe that a Russian apology for Lavrov’s lie would reflect even the slightest regret, or that the Russian government as a whole does not share his view, then you must believe that Germany poisoned Alexei Navalny, that Russian Olympic athletes have never used banned substances and that U.S. military contractors are deploying chemical weapons to the Donbas, among the many lies told by Russia. An apology would be just another lie.
Israel has given Ukraine diplomatic support at the United Nations. But it has provided no weapons to Ukraine other than helmets and flak jackets. Israel argues that its relative neutrality allows it to act as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine and that its ties to Russia are important to Israel’s security in the Middle East, especially as it mounts an aerial campaign against Iranian operations and proxies, which Russia could, but thus far has not, interfered with. But it’s obvious that there is nothing to mediate between Ukraine and Russia, and military analysts like Max Boot point out that, given the Russian military performance in Ukraine, Israel should have nothing to fear from Russian jets in Syria.
Israel exists to ensure the security of the Jewish people, not just in Israel but everywhere. It can’t fulfill that role by staying largely on the sidelines while a brutal totalitarian regime led by war criminals, using a false “denazification” pretext bolstered by a blood libel against the Jewish people, invades a democracy that elected a Jewish leader.
In his recent address to the Ukrainian parliament, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the war Ukraine’s “finest hour,” evoking Winston Churchill in World War II. Unless Israel starts providing meaningful military assistance to Ukraine, as dozens of other countries are doing, it certainly won’t be Israel’s finest hour.
Gregory J. Wallance, a writer in New York City, was a federal prosecutor in the Carter and Reagan administrations, where he was a member of the ABSCAM prosecution team that convicted a U.S. senator and six U.S. representatives of bribery. He is working on a book about a 19th century American journalist who investigated the Siberian exile system. Follow him on Twitter at @gregorywallance.
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