Meanwhile, U.S. backing for Israel is further eroding support for Ukraine in the Global South, amid accusations of double standards over how the West views the plight of civilians in the two wars.
As an expert on modern Russia, I see deeper dynamics at work. Putin’s stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict feeds into a narrative of using antisemitism to disparage perceived enemies and defend Russian actions: a tactic that has deep historical origins in the Soviet Union and czarist Russia.
‘A century of antisemitism’
The Gaza war erupted at a crucial moment in the conflict in Ukraine. Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the fall of 2022 had stalled, while Republicans in the U.S. Congress blocked the Biden administration’s efforts to send more aid to Ukraine.
On Jan. 25, 2024, the U.S. State Department’s Global Engagement Center, tasked with combating Russian disinformation, released a 50-page report documenting the ways in which Russian propaganda has weaponized antisemitism to rally support against Western backing for Ukraine.
The report, released two days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, argues, “For over a century, Tsarist, Soviet and now Russian Federation authorities have used antisemitism to discredit, divide, and weaken their perceived adversaries at home and abroad.”
As if to prove the report’s main point, just two days before it was published, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova strayed into the area of Holocaust denialism.
In a Jan. 21 press conference, Zakharova criticized Germany for filing a motion in support of Israel at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, where Israel is defending itself against the charge of genocide.
Germany, Zakharova said, had no right to lecture anyone about genocide. After all, she continued, during World War II, Germany presided over the extermination of “various ethnic and social groups,” with Hitler’s main goal being the elimination of the Slavic peoples.
At no point during her lengthy remarks, which ran to 1,500 words, did Zakharova mention that Jews had been among Hitler’s victims. The omission led to criticism that Russia is deliberately downplaying if not denying the Jewish Holocaust.
Zakharova went on to conflate Germany’s defense of Israel with its support for Ukraine: “Berlin has once again mired itself in exterminating people in a part of Europe where 80 years ago Hitler failed in his effort to exterminate or subdue people.”
Presumably, Zakharova’s comments were aimed at audiences in the Global South, which have generally been more sympathetic to Russia’s argument that the war in Ukraine is a war against Western imperialism.
Weaponizing hate
This is not the first time that the Russian foreign ministry has opened itself to accusations of antisemitism. In May 2022, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov provoked international outrage when, in response to a question over how Russia could claim to be denazifying Ukraine when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish, replied: “I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood. (That Zelensky is Jewish) means absolutely nothing. Wise Jewish people say that the most ardent antisemites are usually Jews.”
Putin subsequently apologized for Lavrov’s remarks in a call with then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, although there was no public apology.
And Lavrov soon returned to the theme of equating the actions of perceived enemies with those of Nazis. In January 2023, Lavrov said NATO is “using Ukraine to wage a proxy war against Russia with the old aim of finally solving the ‘Russian question,’ like Hitler, who sought a final solution to the ‘Jewish question.’”
Meanwhile, U.S. backing for Israel is further eroding support for Ukraine in the Global South, amid accusations of double standards over how the West views the plight of civilians in the two wars.
As an expert on modern Russia, I see deeper dynamics at work. Putin’s stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict feeds into a narrative of using antisemitism to disparage perceived enemies and defend Russian actions: a tactic that has deep historical origins in the Soviet Union and czarist Russia.
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