Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's appalling antisemitic remarks about Hitler's alleged Jewish origins and the comparison he made between the Nazi tyrant and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy should provoke not only widespread shock and condemnation among the world which calls itself "enlightened" but also lead to deep and serious thinking about the phenomenon.
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Anti-Russian sentiment has spread in the West in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the bloody war that has lasted for weeks on its soil. Does the West, which makes serious allegations against Russia, not act with unnecessary severity, punishing, imposing sanctions and automatically boycotting Russian businessmen and oligarchs suspected of having an affair with Putin's regime, without conducting an investigation of these suspicions? Is such immediate incrimination not equivalent to national discrimination, which has similar characteristics to racism? Worse than that is whether foreign considerations and interests are the cause of this discriminatory treatment and collective punishment, which is sometimes not based at all on facts but on rumors?
In this context, the case of the person who until recently served as President of the European Jewish Congress, the Russian-Israeli-British businessman Moshe Kantor, stands out. Kantor, who has been elected to this position continuously since 2007, has decided to step back after being placed on the list of Russian oligarchs subject to EU and UK sanctions.
The official reason for the addition of Kantor – a billionaire with an estimated fortune of about $12 billion, a great philanthropist for Israel and Jewish communities and the man who led the fight against antisemitism in Europe in recent years – is his "contribution to Russia's war effort" because he owns the Acron Fertilizer Company, one of the largest fertilizer companies in Russia, the fifth largest, with a profit of $1.7 billion in 2020. Do Kantor and his company financially support Putin's war effort?
Of the 27 EU member states that created the list of punished oligarchs, two – Hungary and Austria – opposed Kantor's inclusion on the list because he was the elected leader of a large Jewish organization. Among the countries that supported Kantor's inclusion in the list was France, where President Emanuel Macron informed Kantor in early February 2022, two weeks before the outbreak of war, of the decision to award him France's Commander of the National Order of the Legion of Honour, the highest French order of merit.
Was Macron then unaware of Kantor's alleged "contribution" to the Russian economy?
After all, Russia's involvement in Ukraine, among other things through the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, and the deployment of military forces near the border with Ukraine were known to all. What made Kantor all of a sudden, an "undesirable figure" and a "collaborator" with Putin? Do the sanctions have reasons he is unaware of, any secret intelligence, or was it easy to add him to the list of Russian oligarchs under sanctions, to get rid of a public Jewish figure who spared no effort and resources, to force Europeans to deal with their antisemitism?
The known facts are as follows. Kantor acquired ownership of Acron in 1993, seven years before Putin was elected president of Russia and without any involvement whatsoever of the Russian leader. In the same year, Kantor immigrated to Israel and became an Israeli citizen. He later moved to Switzerland, from where he ran his own business and public activities. Ten years ago, he moved to the UK and at the end of the previous decade also received British citizenship. His direct ties with Putin have been reduced over the past twenty years to eight official meetings as part of his duties at the European Jewish Congress. During these meetings, Kantor also worked, among other things, to promote issues that were important to Israel - such as the issue of preventing the sale of advanced Russian weapons systems to Iran.
Kantor's critics in the Jewish world, some people whose connections to Putin are much closer and tighter than those of the former President of the European Jewish Congress, argue that Kantor should have condemned Russia's war on Ukraine. But as the President of the Jewish Congress in Europe, representing the Jewish communities standing on both sides of the barricade - in Ukraine and Russia, would taking such an unequivocal position not have led to harm to the Jews of Russia? Was not this caution also the policy pursued by the President of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, who was quick to delete criticism he had leveled at Russia in the context of the war?
Kantor's inclusion in the list of oligarchs subject to European sanctions due to their proximity to Putin smells bad, from every possible direction. The anti-Russian sentiment that encourages Russophobia – fear of anything Russian, which by the way was a fairly common phenomenon in Nazi Germany – even in relation to Jews, cannot be the enlightened West's response to the tragic situation in Ukraine. If the West practices the methods it attributes to Russia, what is it fighting for?
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