Yair Lapid, the Israeli Foreign Minister, lambasted his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Monday for claiming Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood” and called the Russian ambassador for “clarifications.”

Israel has attempted to maintain a careful balance between the two sides since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, but statements made by the Russian foreign minister on an Italian channel enraged Israel.

Moscow has previously stated that it wants Ukraine to be “de-militarized” and “de-Nazified.”

In an interview published Sunday by the Italian news site Mediaset, Lavrov stated that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “puts forward an argument of what kind of Nazism they can have if he is Jewish.”

According to a translation provided on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website, Lavrov then said, “I might be mistaken, but Hitler had Jewish blood as well.”

In a foreign ministry statement on the “grave remarks,” Lapid slammed the statements.

“Foreign Minister Lavrov’s remarks are both an unforgivable and outrageous statement, as well as a terrible historical error,” Lapid stated.

“Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust. The lowest level of racism against Jews is to accuse Jews themselves of antisemitism.“

According to the statement, Israel’s foreign ministry “has summoned the Russian Ambassador to Israel for a clarification meeting.”

Dani Dayan, the director of Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Center, slammed Lavrov’s words, calling them “unfounded, delusional, and dangerous remarks which deserve to be condemned.”

In an address to Israel’s Knesset at the end of March, Zelensky urged the Jewish state to “make a decision” by backing Ukraine against Russia, and begged for weaponry from the Jewish state.

According to Israeli sources, Israel has provided helmets and protective vests to Ukrainian rescue workers but has not lately furnished the nation with weaponry.

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