Newsweek implied in the headline of their latest article about the Russian-Israeli spat over Hitler’s alleged Jewish heritage that Russia doesn’t have the right to lecture anyone about the Holocaust. It most certainly does have such a right, however, since its Foreign Ministry’s latest statement that was cited in Newsweek’s article to their credit reminded Israel that it’s “cynically ignoring the epidemic of destroying and desecrating monuments to the true righteous peoples of the world—the soldiers of the Red Army who stopped the Holocaust and saved the Jewish world.” That outlet, however, didn’t add the last part of their comment where Russian diplomats asked “How many times did the Israeli Foreign Ministry issue sharp protests on this occasion to the ambassadors of Poland, Bulgaria, the Baltic countries, and Ukraine?”

It’s truly shocking that the same country that was partially founded by Holocaust survivors and politically represents their descendants would ignore such antisemitic hate crimes in Central & Eastern Europe. That just goes to show that Foreign Minister Lavrov’s worldview that one’s ethno-religious identity at birth doesn’t predetermine their political views later in life is valid, which is what’s actually at the core of the latest Russian-Israeli spat. By cynically exploiting his controversial reference to Hitler’s alleged heritage that he employed to help make that point during his recent interview with Italian media as the focus of this artificially manufactured scandal, Israel is attempting to smear Lavrov and the Russian government that he represents as antisemitic fascists. This is being done in spite of President Putin’s passionate philo-Semitism that discredits those false attacks against him and his team.

For instance, the Russian leader told the Keren Heyesod Foundation in September 2019 that “Russians and Israelis have ties of family and friendship. This is a true common family; I can say this without exaggeration. Almost 2 million Russian speakers live in Israel. We consider Israel a Russian-speaking country.” He was even former Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s guest of honor in January 2020 at the “Remembering The Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism Forum” where he declared full and unwavering solidarity with Israel in its global crusade against antisemitism and historical revisionism, especially those modern-day fascists who deny the Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany and the role that it played in stopping the Holocaust. For these reasons, incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Bennett praised him during their meeting last year as “a very close and true friend of the State of Israel”.

The complete reversal of Israel’s attitude towards Russia from praising its leader for his passionate philo-Semitism to condemning its top diplomat as an antisemitic racist who’s politicizing the Holocaust in order to absolve the Nazis of their role in that genocide like Foreign Minister Lapid and Prime Minister Bennett just did ignores the fact that Russia has every moral right to lecture anyone about the Holocaust. First, President Putin acknowledged in 2013 that the first Soviet government “was 80-85% Jewish”, which makes it the first (albeit undeclared) Jewish State in modern history predating Israel’s scandalous formation by several decades. Second, approximately half of the Holocaust was carried out by Nazi Germany and its local allies on Soviet territory. And third, the Red Army played the decisive role in stopping the Holocaust and liberating the remaining Jewish survivors from the Nazis’ death camps.

The Israeli government probably flipped its position towards Russia for several reasons. First, they’re presumably self-conscious of the terrible optics of a Jewish government that represents Holocaust survivors and their descendants politically supporting Neo-Nazis in Kiev for the purpose of signaling support for Israel’s Western allies so they’re seeking to distract the world’s attention from the Russian government’s factually true observations. Second, they intend to jump on the US-led West’s Russia-bashing bandwagon as a show of fealty towards those same allies. And third, Israel intends to distract the world from its own tacit employment of Hitler’s fascist ideology that it utilizes to justify its continued subjugation of the Palestinians. All three explanations also add credence to Lavrov’s worldview that its leader’s ethno-religious identities as Israeli Jews don’t preclude them from supporting Neo-Nazis in Kiev.

The “politically correct” narrative in the West is that Israel is the only country with the moral right to lecture anyone about the Holocaust because it was partially founded by survivors of that genocide, but the USSR also had many Holocaust survivors after the war since they were its own citizens. The West doesn’t want to acknowledge that though since it has politically vested interests in imposing the false standard onto everyone else that only their Israeli ally can lecture anyone about this genocide, which is politicized to shield their geopolitical creation from criticism regarding its scandalous creation and its brutal mistreatment of the Palestinians. What this artificially manufactured spat that Israel unilaterally started has just counterproductively achieved, however, is that it broke that country’s monopoly on lecturing others about the Holocaust by provoking Russia to defend its own such moral right to do the same.

Of course, the US-led West won’t acknowledge this since it’ll say and do anything to retain Israel’s monopoly on this sensitive subject in the sphere of public consciousness for the political reasons that were mentioned in the preceding paragraph, including doubling down on completely false historical revisionism denying the USSR’s decisive role in ending the Holocaust. They’ll likely also maximally amplify their fake information narratives alleging that President Putin and his entire government are antisemitic racists who secretly worship Hitler even though they’re among the world’s top anti-fascists right now. Israel and its Western allies’ attacks against Russia will only result in them inadvertently extending credence to Hitler’s worldview that’s the polar opposite of Lavrov’s whom they’re criticizing, which actually just works against their respective soft power interests for self-explanatory reasons.