Israel has reproached the Belarusian President, Aleksandr Lukashenko, for his “deeply disturbing” comparison between the Holocaust of the Jewish people and Israel.
Lukashenko made the comparison during a wide-reaching interview with Al Arabiya on Monday.
The Belarusian president told Melinda Nucifora that “Israel must be a little more careful.
"They already have a bad reputation in the world because of the bombing of Gaza. It is a holocaust," he said.
"Why do we speak about the Holocaust suffered by the Israelis while they themselves have killed so many people, women, and above all, children have died in the Gaza Strip?"
“Gaza was simply wiped off the face of the earth, and they are trying to build a resort on the land where these people were killed. So we say that Israel has to start thinking about its future because otherwise even nuclear weapons will not help them.”
In response, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said “the remarks made by the President of Belarus – a country that knows all too well the horrors of the Holocaust committed on its own soil – in his interview with Al Arabiya are unacceptable and deeply disturbing.”
“Any comparison between the Holocaust of the Jewish people and Israel’s just war against terrorism must be unequivocally rejected.”
'Vile, outdated antisemitic conspiracies'
The Foreign Ministry also condemned as “equally appalling” Lukashenko’s “revival of vile, outdated antisemitic conspiracies that should have long been consigned to history.”
Later in the interview, Lukashenko said Israel “got the United States involved” in the Middle East war.
“Israel provoked the United States. The Israel lobby in the US, the Jewish lobby, is very strong in the United States. They are rich and powerful people in the United States, and they do have influence,” he said.
Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus since 1994, was previously reprimanded by Israel’s Foreign Ministry in June 2024 when he claimed Jews “steal without thinking.”
During a meeting on corruption, Lukashenko said, “There is a list of 30 suspects here. Forgive me, I’m not antisemitic, but more than half of the accused are Jewish.”
“What’s going on here? Have they [the Jews] assumed a special privileged status? Stealing and not thinking about their future? In Belarus, everyone is equal before the law. Jews, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians, and also Poles. Everyone,” he said at the time.