Germany Refuses To Accept Netanyahu’s Claim Palestinian Inspired Holocaust

The Israeli prime min­is­ter, Binyamin Netanyahu, has attract­ed a storm of crit­i­cism for an incen­di­ary speech in which he accused the sec­ond world war Palestinian grand mufti of Jerusalem of hav­ing sug­gest­ed the geno­cide of the Jews to Adolf Hitler. The com­ments in a speech to the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem came in the con­text of the cur­rent vio­lence between Israelis and Palestinians and were con­demned by his­to­ri­ans and the Israeli oppo­si­tion leader Isaac Herzog for triv­i­al­is­ing the Holocaust. On the Palestinian side, senior offi­cial Saeb Erekat described the remarks as absolv­ing Hitler.

In his speech, Netanyahu pur­port­ed to describe a meet­ing between Haj Amin al-Husseini and Hitler in November 1941. “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 [to Palestine].’” According to Netanyahu, Hitler then asked: “What should I do with them?” and the mufti replied: “Burn them.” Among those ques­tion­ing Netanyahu’s inter­pre­ta­tion of his­to­ry was Prof Dan Michman, the head of the Institute of Holocaust Research at Bar-Ilan University and head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem. He said that while Hitler did indeed meet the mufti, this hap­pened after the Final Solution began.

Yad Vashem’s chief his­to­ri­an, Prof Dina Porat, told the Israeli news web­site Ynet that Netanyahu’s claims were incor­rect. “You can­not say that it was the mufti who gave Hitler the idea to kill or burn Jews. It’s not true. Their meet­ing occurred after a series of events that point to this.” Netanyahu made the claim – which he also made in 2012 – to illus­trate what he said was the Palestinian his­to­ry of using holy sites in Jerusalem as pre­texts for com­mit­ting acts of vio­lence against Jews. However, almost as soon as the tran­script was released by his office, he was accused on social media and then by a raft of Israeli polit­i­cal fig­ures of fac­tu­al errors in his assertions.

The claim that Husseini – who met and sup­port­ed Hitler – was the one to ini­ti­ate the idea of the exter­mi­na­tion of Europe’s Jews has been sug­gest­ed by his­to­ri­ans on the fringes of Holocaustresearch, but is reject­ed by most his­to­ri­ans. Defending his com­ments, Netanyahu said: “I didn’t mean to absolve Hitler of respon­si­bil­i­ty, but to show that the father of the Palestinian nation want­ed to destroy Jews even with­out occupation.”

Speaking before fly­ing to Berlin to meet the US sec­re­tary of state, John Kerry, Netanyahu said he did not mean to dimin­ish Hitler’s respon­si­bil­i­ty for the Holocaust. “He is respon­si­ble for the Final Solution, and he made the deci­sion,” he said. “It is also absurd to ignore the role played by the mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was a war crim­i­nal and encour­aged Hitler to exter­mi­nate European Jewry.”

A spokesman for the German chan­cel­lor, Angela Merkel, how­ev­er, reject­ed Netanyahu’s fram­ing. “All Germans know the his­to­ry of the mur­der­ous race mania of the Nazis that led to the break with civil­i­sa­tion that was the Holocaust,” her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said. “I see no rea­son to change our view of his­to­ry in any way. We know that respon­si­bil­i­ty for this crime against human­i­ty is German and very much our own.”

At the cen­tre of the row is Netanyahu’s sug­ges­tion that Hitler had want­ed to expel Jews and that it was Husseini who some­how per­suad­ed him instead to kill them when the two men met in late November 1941. In real­i­ty, the mass killings of Jews by SS mobile killing units – Einsatzgruppen – were already under way when the two men met face to face. The first was in Lithuania in July 1941, described by Yad Vashem as the “begin­ning” of the Final Solution. In September 1941, again before Husseini’s meet­ing with Hitler, Einsatzgruppe C, com­mand­ed by Otto Rasch, killed more than 33,000 Jews over two days in the Babi Yar ravine on the out­skirts of Kiev, an act of mass mur­der ordered by the new Nazi mil­i­tary gov­er­nor of Kiev, Maj Gen Kurt Eberhard.

Netanyahu’s incen­di­ary com­ments come amid a ris­ing death toll and accu­sa­tions of incite­ment on both sides, with Israelis point­ing to com­ments made by Palestinian offi­cials and inflam­ma­to­ry mate­r­i­al on social media, and Palestinians equal­ly accus­ing Netanyahu’s gov­ern­ment of fan­ning the flames and point­ing to anti-Palestinian mate­r­i­al on social media. The vio­lence con­tin­ued on Wednesday with sev­er­al inci­dents, includ­ing a stab­bing that crit­i­cal­ly injured a 19-year-old Israeli female sol­dier. Over the past month, 10 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks, most of them stab­bings. In that time, 46 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, includ­ing 25 iden­ti­fied by Israel as attack­ers, and the rest in clash­es with Israeli troops. AnEritrean asy­lum seek­er died after being shot by a secu­ri­ty guard and beat­en by a mob that mis­tak­en­ly believed he was a Palestinian assailant dur­ing a dead­ly Arab attack at a bus sta­tion. Reacting to Netanyahu’s com­ments, Herzog wrote on his Facebook page: “This is a dan­ger­ous his­tor­i­cal dis­tor­tion and I demand Netanyahu cor­rect it imme­di­ate­ly as it min­imis­es the Holocaust, Nazism and … Hitler’s part in our people’s ter­ri­ble disaster.”

He added that Netanyahu’s remarks played into the hands of Holocaust deniers. “A historian’s son must be accu­rate about his­to­ry,” Herzog wrote. “Netanyahu has for­got­ten that he’s not only the prime min­is­ter of Israel but the prime min­is­ter of the Jewish people’s gov­ern­ment.” The grand mufti, added Herzog, “gave the order to kill my grand­fa­ther, Rabbi Herzog, and active­ly sup­port­ed Hitler”.

Herzog’s fel­low Zionist Union MP Itzik Shmuli called on Netanyahu to apol­o­gise to Holocaust vic­tims. “This is a great shame, a prime min­is­ter of the Jewish state at the ser­vice of Holocaust-deniers – this is a first,” he said. “This isn’t the first time Netanyahu dis­torts his­tor­i­cal facts, but a lie of this mag­ni­tude is the first.” Denouncing Netanyahu’s com­ments, Erekat, the chief Palestinian peace nego­tia­tor, also weighed into the row. “It is a sad day in his­to­ry when the leader of the Israeli gov­ern­ment hates his neigh­bour so much so that he is will­ing to absolve the most noto­ri­ous war crim­i­nal in his­to­ry, Adolf Hitler, of the mur­der of 6 mil­lion Jews dur­ing the Holocaust.”

Seeking to defend Netanyahu, the defence min­is­ter, Moshe Ya’alon, told Army Radio that the idea for the Final Solution was Hitler’s and the mufti had joined him, and accused the Palestinian Authority of employ­ing “incite­ment” that was “the lega­cy of the Nazis”. “I don’t know what exact­ly the prime min­is­ter said. History is actu­al­ly very, very clear,” said Ya’alon. “Hitler ini­ti­at­ed it, Haj Amin al-Husseini joined him, and unfor­tu­nate­ly the jiha­di move­ments pro­mote anti­semitism to this day, includ­ing incite­ment in the Palestinian Authority that is based on the lega­cy of the Nazis.” Netanyahu’s com­ments fol­low remarks made by the ener­gy min­is­ter, Yuval Steinitz, at a recent con­fer­ence in Washington, who accused the Palestinian pres­i­dent, Mahmoud Abbas, of “Nazi-like incite­ment”. Steinitz – one of Netanyahu’s most loy­al allies who often echoes the Israeli prime minister’s posi­tions – labelled Abbas “the num­ber one inciter in the world against Israel and the Jewish peo­ple” and com­pared his attacks against the Jewish state to Nazi propaganda.
Read more here : Anger at Netanyahu claim Palestinian grand mufti inspired Holocaust