Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday slammed the remarks about Jews made by Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko over the weekend.

During a World War II memorial service, Lukashenko said that “Jews succeeded in having the whole world bow down to them.”

The ministry stated that Lukashenko’s remarks were “not acceptable.”

The ministry also summoned the Belarusian chargé d’affaires to Israel for a discussion on the incident.

Also on Tuesday, the US Transportation Department issued a final order blocking most travel between the United States and Belarus, underscoring Washington’s concern about the recent forced landing of a passenger jet to arrest a dissident Belarussian journalist.

The order, which was requested by the State Department, bars airlines from selling tickets for travel between the two countries, with exceptions only for humanitarian or national-security reasons.

The Transportation Department proposed the ban last week and said Tuesday that it received no objections. There are no direct passenger flights between the U.S. and Belarus.

In May, Belarussian officials ordered a Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, to land in Minsk, where authorities removed journalist Raman Pratasevich from the plane and arrested him. Pratasevich faces a possible 15-year prison term.

President Joe Biden has called the forced diversion an “outrageous incident” and joined others in calling for an international investigation.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem & AP)