Moscow — A top Russian rabbi and the Israeli embassy criticized Tuesday a group of nationalist legislators who accused Jews of fomenting ethnic hatred and provoking anti-Semitism.
Rabbi Adolf Shayevich said in a statement that “it is impossible to comment” on the letter signed by some 20 Communist and nationalist members of Russia's lower house of parliament.
In the letter, dated Jan. 13 and faxed in part to the Associated Press by the office of legislator Alexander Krutov, the group appealed to the prosecutor-general to launch proceedings “on the prohibition in our country of all religious and ethnic Jewish organizations as extremist.”
Echoing anti-Semitic tracts of the Czarist era, the letter's authors accused Jews of working against the interests of the countries where they live and of monopolizing power worldwide.
“It is possible to say that the entire democratic world today is under the monetary and political control of international Judaism, which high-profile bankers are openly proud of,” they claimed.
Mr. Shayevich said the letter contained “lying facts and arguments, expressing the raving condition of animal anti-Semitism,” and he urged Russian prosecutors to investigate it.
The Israeli embassy said the letter espoused Nazi ideas and lamented its appearance just days before the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland by Soviet troops. The embassy called on Russian authorities to act against those trying to “inflame nationalist discord.”
The prosecutor-general's office said no investigation would be made because the letter has been retracted. A woman who answered the phone at Mr. Krutov's office said the letter was “withdrawn,” but she refused to comment further.
The Interfax news agency quoted Mr. Krutov as saying that anti-Semitism is “minimal” in Russia.
Also Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the letter had “nothing in common with the official stand of the Russian leadership, which categorically rejects any signs of inter-ethnic strife and xenophobia, including anti-Semitism.”
The ministry said it was “especially regrettable” that the letter appeared before the Auschwitz liberation commemorations.
Jewish leaders have praised President Vladimir Putin's government for encouraging religious tolerance, but rights groups say authorities are failing to prosecute adequately the perpetrators of anti-Semitic and racial violence in Russia.
