Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned Aleksander Lukashenko’s comments about the Jews making the world “grovel.”
By United With Israel Staff and World Israel News
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced remarks by Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko that the world “grovels” to the Jews because of the Holocaust.
The ministry described Lukashenko’s comments at a memorial for fallen soldiers of World War II as “unacceptable” and summoned the chargé d’affaires of the Belarussian embassy in Tel Aviv to discuss the incident.
Addressing an Independence Day event in the capital of Minsk on Saturday, the Belarussian strongman said, “The Jews managed to force the world to remember the Holocaust. The entire world grovels before them and gives in to them. They are afraid to say a single word out of place.”
He added, “On our part, we, being tolerant and kind, did not want to hurt anyone’s feelings and let the things down to the point when they have have started to hurt us.”
Lukashenko has been president of Belarus since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1994 and is often referred to as “Europe’s last dictator.” In 2020, he won an election widely considered rigged; 35,000 people were arrested in the subsequent anti-government protests.
The Eastern European state has been isolated since May when a Ryanair flight from Athens to the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius was diverted to Minsk following a false bomb threat. There, Belarussian authorities arrested dissident journalist Roman Protasevich, who was aboard the flight.The 26-year-old Protasevich is now under house arrest.
Western sanctions on Belarus include travel bans and asset freezes of 166 people and 15 entities connected to Lukashenko’s regime. Western airlines won’t fly over Belarussian airspace, treating it as a no-fly zone.
Around 246,000 Belarussian Jews were killed during the Holocaust. A large wave immigrated to Israel in the late 1970s. An estimated 50,000 Jews still live there.