by Bill White
[Transcript]
Twitter is abuzz with the comments of Russia’s foreign minister.
Sergey Lavrov was speaking about the West’s persistent refusal to acknowledge that there is a growing presence of Nazis (Neo or otherwise) in Ukraine, when he foolishly threw out a comment about Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is, after all, the West’s poster child for everything good and pure…
Lavrov said that Hitler had some Jewish blood in him…
In case you haven’t been following the story of Russia’s war in Ukraine, one of Vladimir Putin’s goals, he says, was to “denazify” its government. Whether you believe that or not is something for you to decide, but the post-2014 Ukrainian government’s problematic relationship with extreme right-wing parties and neo-Nazi groups is something the West is trying to sweep under the rug.
Naturally, for Lavrov to suggest that Hitler had (some) Jewish blood sparked immediate outrage in Israel and around the world but this firestorm has been compounded by those most-outraged when they exaggerated what was said and then twisted his stupid comment to say that what Lavrov really meant was… to blame Jews for the Holocaust.
No, he wasn’t blaming us Jews for the Holocaust. He was pointing out that being Jewish doesn’t immunize someone from being an anti-Semite. Truth be told, we’ve got a lot of Jews who hate Jews and who hate Israel, among our rank and file.
The fact is that it's quite likely that everyone on the planet has some Jewish blood in them, but that doesn’t make them Jewish. News flash, Hitler wasn’t Jewish because his mother wasn’t Jewish. Just like Zelenskyy’s two children are not Jewish. Neither fact means that Ukraine does not have a problem with Nazis.
Lavrov was pointing out the utter hypocrisy of those who rabbit on about Zelenskyy being Jewish, saying that because he’s Jewish, Ukraine couldn’t possibly have a serious problem with its association with Nazis, which it does.
And as a matter of historical fact, until the fall of the Soviet Union, it was believed that about 900,000 Jews were murdered as part of the Holocaust in Ukraine. However, with access to Soviet archives that number increased to 1.2 million Jews murdered, and a more recent estimate brings the number up to over 1.6 million Jews murdered in Ukraine, with more than 100,000 Ukrainians having joined with police units that provided key assistance to the Nazis.
Despite Zelenskyy’s presidency and some say because of him, Neo-Nazi and extreme nationalist groups linked to the Azov Battalion have maintained growing power in Ukraine and in local politics, in the Nationalist heartland, located in the west of the country.
The fact is that after Zelenskyy’s election win in 2019, he conceded to the extreme right who had threatened him with removal from office, or even death if he negotiated with the separatist leaders from Donbas, whom he conveniently dismissed as terrorists.
So don’t talk to me about Zelenskyy being Jewish or his virtue as a protector of ‘his people’. He’s a charlatan, an actor playing a role, using his acting and social media skills to advance his agenda, which now includes guilting NATO into war with Russia.
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