Activists slam Lithuania’s coalition with ‘antisemitic’ politician

The decision by Lithuania’s Social Democrats to form a coalition government with a populist party whose leader is standing trial over antisemitic statements has attracted local and international criticism.

The Social Democrats, the winner of last month’s parliamentary election, has defended its decision to join forces with controversial politician Remigijus Žemaitaitis, the leader of the Dawn of Nemunas Party.

Žemaitaitis has been accused of antisemitism, something that the politician has denied, insisting that he was criticising the Israeli government and not Jews.

Zev Krengel, the national president of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, told the SA Jewish Report, “We’re extremely concerned by this, and will be formally engaging with the Lithuanian government.”

Antisemitism charges against Žemaitaitis are centred on vile statements he made in May and June 2023 about Israel and Jews, at least five public statements mostly made on social media.

In one on Facebook on 8 May last year, he posted a comment on a news story about Israel having demolished a European Union-funded school in the West Bank. “Apparently, there are animals in this world besides Putin – Israel. One has to state that this school was built thanks to EU funding. After such events, no wonder there appear sayings like this: ‘A Jew was climbing the ladder and accidentally fell off; take a stick, kids, and kill that little Jew.’ [this is a well-known Lithuanian antisemitic rhyme]. What else must happen for Israel to realise that such provocation and such actions only stir more anger and hatred against Jews and their people.”

This isn’t the only time Žemaitaitis has referred to the Lithuanian rhyme, known for being antisemitic.

Michael Kretzmer, a British director of Lithuanian descent known for the documentary J’Accuse! A Cry From The Killing Pits of Lithuania, said he was dismayed, considering that Lithuania had made progress in recent times. In a recent Times of Israel blog, he wrote about how Lithuanians were finally ready to tell the truth about the Holocaust, and Jews should support them. However, this latest development has enraged him.

“What’s happening in Lithuania threatens to invalidate all the good work that has happened over the past year,” he told the SA Jewish Report. “In choosing to work with the disgusting Dawn of Nemunas Party, the government is showing its contempt for the Jewish people and solidarity with the antisemites that still have such influence in Lithuania. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.”

Grant Gochin, born in South Africa to a Jewish family of Lithuanian descent, who continues to expose Lithuanian Holocaust revisionism, said this week that “zero” progress had been made in Lithuania.

“This comes as no surprise, Žemaitaitis is just a symptom of Lithuanian society,” Gochin said. “He’s a product of the Lithuanian Genocide Centre. His statements echo the official narrative about Jews and the official Holocaust denial, fraud, minimisation, and inversion by the Lithuanian state. The president and all levels of government and Lithuanian Courts have defended this ideology. All Žemaitaitis did is say the quiet part aloud.”

The Lithuanian Parliament, Seimas, appointed a commission to assess Žemaitaitis’s antisemitic utterances. The commission then turned to the Constitutional Court to give a ruling on whether Žemaitaitis’s statements constituted a serious violation of his oath of office, thus giving grounds for impeachment.

The Constitutional Court ruled last April that Žemaitaitis’s statements violated articles in the Constitution on hate speech and discrimination on the basis of nationality. According to the court, this was a gross violation of the Constitution and a breach of his oath as a Parliament member. Žemaitaitis then resigned from the Seimas, arguably in order to avoid impeachment which would have barred him from running for elected office. There’s still an ongoing criminal investigation over his statements.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC), which advocates for Jews globally, has urged Social Democrats leader and likely next prime minister, Gintautas Paluckas, to reverse his plans to enter into a coalition with Dawn of Nemunas.

It said in letters to Paluckas that inclusion would “strengthen those with antisemitic views in Lithuania and the region; endanger the Jewish communities of the region; and severely damage Lithuania’s reputation as a beacon of democracy and freedom”.

“If these plans go forward, Žemaitaitis’s views will become synonymous with those of Lithuania’s Social Democrats and therefore the new Lithuanian prime minister. His hateful antisemitic and anti-Israel statements will come to represent the governing coalition, leaving would-be Prime Minister Paluckas to preside over a government unlike any that has preceded it,” said Rabbi Andrew Baker, AJC director of International Jewish Affairs. “It would be a government that AJC and many of our friends in the United States and around the world cannot support or defend. It will surely do irreparable harm to Lithuania’s international reputation at one of the most consequential times in world affairs.”

Žemaitaitis won’t serve in the Cabinet himself, but his party will lead three of the government’s 14 ministries, among them the justice ministry, said Social Democrat deputy leader and designated Prime Minister Paluckas.

Paluckas told reporters that joining forces with the party was the only way to have a “sustainable” coalition, and said his party was ready to explain its decision to the country’s international partners.

“Some claim the whole Dawn of Nemunas Party is antisemitic. We don’t see it like that,” Paluckas said. “There’s no place for antisemitism, neither in the Social Democrat party nor its government.”

The Social Democrat-led alliance, which includes the For Lithuania Party, would hold 84 seats in the 141-member Parliament, above the 71 seats required for a majority.

Dawn of Nemunas, which won 20 seats in the election, defines itself as a centre-left and nationalist party. It’s widely referred to in Lithuania as populist.

During the election campaign, both the Social Democrats and the second-placed centre-right Homeland Union said they would refrain from forming a coalition with Dawn of Nemunas, which came third in the election.

The new government is expected to be sworn into office in December.