Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has warned of rising anti-Semitism in Latvia.
Speaking to reporters at a press conference in the Latvian capital of Riga on Monday, Lieberman said, “The lesson is that the Jewish people must always be prepared to defend themselves.”
In the first visit of an Israeli foreign minister to Latvia since its independence from the Soviet Union, Lieberman praised how the government handled a demonstration last week in honor of the Nazi invasion of the country in 1941.
During his visit, Lieberman met with his counterpart Foreign Minister Aivis Ronis and Latvian President Valdis Zatlers where he discussed the neo-Nazi parade and restoring formerly Jewish-owned property in the country that was nationalized by the Soviet government in 1940 confiscated by Nazi Germany a year later, and renationalized by the Soviet union following the end of World War II.
A 2006 bill that would have given millions of lats to Jews whose property was stolen was defeated in the Latvian parliament and has not since been debated.
