Belarusian president blames Jews for his government's corruption, says he's 'not antisemitic'

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko made an antisemitic statement Saturday during his government meeting in which he hinted at a connection between Jews and theft.

He referred to a corruption case involving his former aide, the governor of the Vitebsk region and former Minister of Agriculture and Food Igor Brylo, as well as dozens of other people. "There are 36 people on the list. Sorry, I don't consider myself antisemitic, but more than half of them are Jewish. Do they have a special, privileged role, that they steal and do not think about their future? Do they have privileges? All peoples living in Belarus should be equal. Jews, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians and Poles," Lukashenko said.

His statement was broadcast on the state television channel Belarus 1, but the problematic quote was not included in the press release on the presidency's website.

This is not the first antisemitic statement by Lukashenko, who has been called "the last dictator in Europe." In 2007 he said that the Jews had turned the city of Bobruisk into a "pig sty" and that "this was founded as a Jewish city and you know how Jews treat the place they live in." In July 2021 he said that the "whole world bows" to the Jews after the Holocaust. In December 2023 he said: "Armenians are smart people. There is not even one Jew there."

Joe Biden says he’s not anti-Semitic, too, as he blames Jews.

The President’s War Against the Jews
Biden claims he is a lifelong friend of the Jewish people and a Zionist, but these empty words are cover for a decades-long antipathy
BY
JULIE STRAUSS LEVIN
MARCH 27, 2024

Excerpt:

Biden has made downgrading Israel and elevating the Palestinians, while also using them as a pressure tool against Israel, central to his policy in the region. Upon taking office and despite the Taylor Force Act, which prohibits the U.S. from sending certain taxpayer dollars to the PA until it stops funding terrorism, Biden rewarded Palestinian terrorism with U.S. taxpayer monies ultimately amounting to almost a billion dollars. America First Legal Foundation (where I am senior counsel), filed suit against Biden and Blinken on behalf of Congressman Ronny Jackson, Stuart and Robbi Force, parents of Taylor Force, the U.S. Army veteran murdered at the hands of a Palestinian terrorist in 2016, and Sarri Singer, herself a victim of Palestinian terrorism in 2003, for violating the TFA. Judge Kacsmaryk recently denied the government’s motion to dismiss, and the case is pending. The court found the plaintiffs have standing to sue Biden and Blinken because each plaintiff has suffered an injury (heightened likelihood of physical harm or death when visiting Israel) that is fairly traceable to the defendants’ conduct (funding the PA which pays terrorists and incentivizes terrorism), and that each plaintiff’s injury is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision by the court (stopping the flow of monies to the PA reduces terrorist acts).

Biden knows that payments to the PA incentivize and reward terrorists and the PA’s terrorist operations; his actions reveal he doesn’t care. The same applies to Secretary of State Blinken. His State Department revealed in a March 2022 fact sheet that, “since April 2021, the United States has provided over half a billion dollars in assistance for the Palestinians, including more than $417 million in humanitarian assistance for mainly the descendants of Palestinian refugees through UNRWA.” Is it a coincidence that even prior to Hamas’ heinous Oct. 7 attack, there had been a significant increase in terrorist acts since Biden and Blinken took office? In the first half of 2023 alone, there were more than 3,600 Palestinian terrorist attacks, surpassing all of 2022.

Biden has what’s known as a whole-of-government approach in his embrace of the Palestinians at the expense of Israel, mobilizing multiple executive branch agencies to work across individual silos to implement an integrated policy. Just last year, his Department of Homeland Security ceremoniously handed over to the PA a 2,700-year-old spoon dating back to the Assyrian empire describing the conveyance as a “historic repatriation.” The State Department’s George Noll, chief of the Office of Palestinian Affairs, described the spoon as an “example of Palestinian cultural patrimony” and that the transfer was a “historic moment between the American and Palestinian people.” This attempt to manufacture an ancient “Palestinian” lineage in the Land of Israel while denying the right of Jews to settle in their ancestral homeland was clear.

Oct. 7 didn’t temper this obscenity. Just one day after the Oct. 7 slaughter, Blinken, in concert with Turkey, called for a cease-fire by an X post—on the evening of Oct. 8. Blinken deleted the post about 12 hours later, but the message was loud and clear: Stand down and remain victims. Two days later, Biden’s National Security Council spokesman called on Israel to show restraint and take only “necessary and proportionate action” to defend itself.

The inconvenient truth is that there was a cease-fire on Oct. 6. Hamas broke it with financial and military assistance from Iran—a terrorist state that is now flush with billions in sanctions relief as a direct result of Biden’s disastrous policy of gifting the Islamic Republic with cash, some of which he helpfully provided barely a month after the October terror attack. And, on Nov. 14, the administration extended a sanctions waiver allowing Iran to access $10 billion. U.S. spokesmen have been repeatedly unable to deny that monies delivered by Biden to Iran weren’t used in funding the Oct. 7 attack because, of course they were.

As if funding Hamas through Iran weren’t bad enough, Biden made it a top priority to help maintain open supply lines to Gaza while also looking the other way as Hamas intercepts and hijacks 60% or more of the humanitarian aid from the many thousands of aid trucks coming into the Strip since the start of the war. Hamas either keeps the aid for its terrorists or sells it to noncombatants at exorbitant prices. This is being reported almost daily from multiple sources, with social media videos corroborating the reports of Hamas’ theft of the cargo. Instead of condemning Hamas for the aid crisis, Biden blames Israel for what his secretary of state has claimed is an “acute food insecurity” crisis in Gaza supposedly affecting “100% of the population.” Biden also ignores that Hamas steals the fuel aid to fire rockets and operate its tunnels. When thousands of Gazans swarmed some 30 food delivery trucks in Gaza and a deadly stampede ensued, IDF aerial footage corroborated the IDF’s account, showing that Hamas was directly to blame, and fired on Palestinians—and yet both the media and the Biden administration have continued to blame Israel, in order to further their repulsive, evidence-free narrative.

During his State of the Union address, Biden didn’t demand that aid also be given to the hostages Hamas holds and abuses, nor did he demand their release. He certainly did not laud Israel for its unparalleled efforts to avoid civilian casualties and facilitate aid transports. None of those realities fit Biden’s anti-Israel rhetoric. Instead, Biden boldly lied, accusing Israel of making humanitarian assistance a “secondary consideration or a bargaining chip” and chiding Israel that “protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority.” As a bonus, Biden also endorsed Hamas’ fake casualty numbers.

Not content with false and inflammatory rhetoric libeling Israel, or with displays of U.S. support for Gaza such as using the military to air-drop supplies, Biden used his address to announce an emergency mission to send U.S. military to build a temporary pier on the coast of Gaza to deliver aid to Gaza. A Pentagon spokesman later shared some details about the 1,000 Army and Navy servicemen to be deployed to deliver some 2 million meals a day into Gaza—giving direct support and comfort to Hamas, whose own construction company was put in charge of building the pier, which will be financed and operated by Qatar, at the Biden administration’s request. Under U.S. law, giving money to a Hamas-affiliated construction company would certainly qualify as providing material support to a designated terrorist group—which is apparently fine now, as long as the U.S. government is writing the checks.

Earlier in February, however, Biden sanctioned four Jews in Judea and Samaria, while ignoring Palestinian terrorists and the PA that supports them. These terrorist have been responsible for hundreds of attempted and successful lethal terrorist attacks in the West Bank since Oct. 7. Jews have been responsible for zero such attacks. Days later, three Israeli banks stated they were suspending the bank accounts of these four individuals to comply with the sanctions. This month, Biden’s Department of Treasury announced new sanctions, this time against three Jews and two farms. These sanctions freeze assets, prevent the individuals from getting visas, and block Jews from accessing the U.S. financial system.

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