Belarus: Lukashenko calls Jews "dirty", Israeli ambassador returns home

[Purveyor]

Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Minsk - Israel's ambassador to Belarus has returned home after authoritarian Belarus leader President Aleksander Lukashenko called a once predominantly-Jewish city in his country 'a pigstye.'

Ambassador Zeev Ben- Ari returned less than a week after October 12 remarks by Lukashenko to Russian reporters in Minsk, during which the Belarusian leader argued Slavic ethnicities such as Belarusians and Russians took better care of their cities than ethnic Jews.

'Have ever been to Bobrusk, have you ever seen what state the city is in? It was terrifying to go inside, it was such a pigstye,' Lukashenko said in a statement supporting his government's high priority on picking up trash and cleaning city streets.

'It (Bobrusk) was a predominantly Jewish city, and you know how Jews treat the places they live. Look at Israel, I've been there. I don't want to offend any one, but they (Israelis) don't try very hard that grass is neatly cut, not like in Moscow, among the Russians, among Belarusians.'

---EOE---

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/news/article_1366750.php/Lukashenko_calls_Jews_%26quotdirty%26quot_Israeli_ambassador_returns_home

[rockymountaindem]

1. Well, what do you expect?

The guy can't do *anything* else right, why should he avoid the old-fashioned antisemitism?

[Purveyor]

3. Is it 'just me' or is not the world currently in 'reverse playback' mode.

Cold war re-emerging, hangman's nooses being left as warnings, anti-semetism on the uptick, the middle class of America disappearing, etc...

[rockymountaindem]

7. I hadn't thought about it that way

but perhaps you are right. I don't know about playback, but some ugly crap from the past seems to be oozing through the cracks of modern society, that's for sure. Hopefully it'll stop here, but given some of the shit you can see on the net involving all kinds of racism and bigotry, maybe we never came as far as we'd like to think.

As I always say, if you want to lose your faith in humanity, read the comments on youtube relating to anything political/ethnic.

[malaise]

8. How ironic that the mere existence of another superpower

the Soviet Union guaranteed our basic rights. The day that wall came down I told hubby that all rights guaranteed out of fear of an alternative system would systematically disappear. It's back to the worst of the 1920s.

[madrchsod]

10. no you are not the only one...

the forces of evil are always waiting for someone to open the gate .

[Chulanowa]

2. Oookay

Way to go, dude.
I wonder if he realized Belarusian Jews are Slavs, too?
Nah, didn't think so, too busy being a dumbshit.

[cali]

5. huh? how do you know that? n/t

[Chulanowa]

12. Pretty simple, really...

Most Jewish people today, even those in Israel, are of Slavic and North European descent, Ashkenazi Jews. The remaining 20% or therabouts, are Sephardic Jews, descendants of Iberian and North African Jewish communities, and Mizrahic Jews, descendants from Near and Middle eastern communities.

Quite simply the odds of a town full of Berber or Arabic Jews in Belarus are... pretty slim. At least compared to the chances of the same town being full of Slavic Jews.

[Igel]

4. I thought it was "Bobruisk".

Is it a language-related thing, BR says "Bobrusk" and Russian says "Bobruisk"? A temporal thing, it used to be one but now it's the other? Or am I confusing two different places?


In any event, I insist on spelling the cretin's name "Lukashenka", which is how it would be spelled in Belrusian. As opposed to the ultranationalist pro-Russian/pro-Stalin tilt that he usually has. (I can't muster much compassion for Lukashenka. Tempted to start writing his name "Lukaszenka", since there's a clear hierarchy for perfection: Russians are tops, Belorusians are second, Poles somewhere above Jews but far below anything E. Slavic.)

[Raksha]

6. This is just same-old, same-old for that part of the world.

I don't know much about Belarus, but my grandparents were Jewish emigrants from Ukraine towards the end of the czarist period. The Russians and Ukrainians have always had a very nasty anti-Semitic streak. They were like that before the communist period and all the way through it. So it doesn't surprise me in the least that they are still anti-Semites in the post-communist era too.

[malaise]

9. It's still pathetic behaviour

I want to jump off this planet.

[Swamp Rat]

11. Oh fuck you Lukashenko! you Nazi!!

My family was exterminated by the Nazis in Bobruisk. ALL of them were. You and your friends already got rid of us. That's YOUR fucking pigstye! NAZI!

Anyway, Lukashenko is a dictator, not a president.

No. 14 in the World's Worst Dicators:

Aleksandr Lukashenko
Belarus
Age: 52.
In power since 1994.
Last year’s rank: 14
http://www.parade.com/export/sites/default/articles/web_exclusives/2007/02-11-2007/dictators14.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Lukashenko
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3882843.stm