Netanyahu Blames a Palestinian Mufti for the Holocaust

Hitler and the Nazi regime exterminated about six million Jews in the Holocaust in 1941-5. The Nazis had a long history of constantly demonizing and slandering the Jews with all kinds of lying propaganda. The Nazis even projected their own genocidal hatred onto the victims.

And in a speech to the World Zionist Congress Prime Minister Netanyahu portrayed a Palestinian mufti as the man who inspired Hitler to exterminate the Jews. This downplays Hitler's role in conceiving and bringing about the genocide against the Jews.

My grandfather came to this land in 1920 and he landed in Jaffa, and very shortly after he landed he went to the immigration office in Jaffa. And a few months later it was burned down by marauders. These attackers, Arab attackers, murdered several Jews, including our celebrated writer Brenner.

And this attack and other attacks on the Jewish community in 1920, 1921, 1929, were instigated by a call of the Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was later sought for war crimes in the Nuremberg trials because he had a central role in fomenting the final solution. He flew to Berlin. Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews. 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." (Source, as cited here.)

This is not true. Hitler and the Nazi regime made the decision to exterminate the Jews. The genocide had already begun by the time of that meeting.

In order to clarify the situation many historians stated that in fact the Nazi campaign of genocide was already underway at the time of this meeting.

The chief historian of the Yad Vashem, the World Center for Holocaust Research, Documentation, Education and Commemoration in Jerusalem, Dina Porat, told the Israeli news Web site Ynet that Netanyahu's statements were factually incorrect. "You cannot say that it was the mufti who gave Hitler the idea to kill or burn Jews," she said. "It's not true. Their meeting occurred after a series of events that point to this." (Washington Post.)

Also opposition MKs spoke out against this statement.

Meretz leader Zehava Galon also criticized Netanyahu's comments: "This is not a Jörg Haider speech. It's not a part of [Mahmoud] Abbas' doctorate. It's a real quote from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu," she said. "Maybe the 33,771 Jews murdered in Babi Yar in September 1941 – two months before the Mufti and Hitler met - should be exhumed and updated that the Nazis didn't mean to destroy them." Those who can't change the future, she said, "are left with rewriting the past." (Haaretz, October 21, 2015.)

It is true that Haj Amin al-Husseini collaborated with the Nazis during World War II as, alas, so many others. But it is absurd and morally disturbing to blame him for somehow inspiring the Holocaust. Hitler and the Nazi regime did that themselves.

About fifty Palestinians and nine Israelis have died violently this month. And Netanyahu inaccurately accused one of the countrymen of his Palestinian neighbors of inspiring the genocide against the Jews. But that is not true. It was the Nazis who conceived and committed the genocide against the Jews.