Israeli Foreign Minister Jair Lapid said the Russian ambassador to Israel would be summoned for a “tough discussion” over comments Lavrov made Sunday in an interview with Italian television. “It’s an unforgivable, scandalous statement, a terrible historical mistake, and we look forward to an apology,” Lapid said. During the interview, Lavrov was asked how Russia could claim that it should “de-Nazify” Ukraine when its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was a Jew. He replied: “When they say ‘What kind of Nazism is this if we are Jews’, I think Hitler was also of Jewish descent, so it means nothing.” Dani Dayan, president of Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, called Lavrov’s remarks “an insult and a severe blow to the victims of true Nazism.” Speaking on Israel’s Kan radio, Dayan said Lavrov was spreading “an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory with no basis in fact.”
