Netanyahu under fire for blaming holocaust on Palestinians

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a meeting at the chancellery in Berlin, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2015. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stirred controversy by suggesting the then head of the Muslim community in Jerusalem gave Hitler the idea to exterminate Jews.

In a speech on Tuesday 20^th October, Netanyahu said the then grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a Palestinian nationalist, convinced Hitler to carry out the Holocaust.

“Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time. He wanted to expel the Jews,” Netanyahu told the World Zionist Congress.

“And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said: ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here.’ ‘So what should I do with them?’ he asked. He said: ‘Burn them.'”

However, the chief historian at Israel’s memorial to the Holocaust said this account was factually incorrect.

Angela Merkel said Germany “abides by its responsibility for the Holocaust”.

“We are very clear in our minds about the Nazis’ responsibility for the break with civilization that was the Shoah,” the German chancellor said.

His speech comes amid three weeks of unrest and attacks threatening a full-scale uprising between Israeli forces and Palestinian.

Israeli opposition politicians as well as Palestinian leaders have sharply criticized Netanyahu’s comments, while historians say they are inaccurate. Among the reactions he garnered, Arab Joint List leader Ayman Odeh said Netanyahu “is rewriting history in order to incite against the Palestinian people”. He added: “The victims of the Nazi monster, among them millions of Jews, have become cheap propaganda in the service of peace rejections.” While Palestinian senior official Saeb Erekat described the remarks as absolving Hitler.

Dina Porat, a professor at Tel Aviv University and the chief historian of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, told Israel Radio on Wednesday, “The idea to rid the world of the Jews was a central theme in Hitler’s ideology a long, long time before he met the mufti.”

Israeli media ridiculed Netanyahu after his remarks, taking to the internet making a number of different memes about him. While the German side responded harshly stating this this story is taught to children in school, and Netanyahu shouldn’t try to change it according to his views.