Think Progress - Germany Reminds Netanyahu That Hitler Was Responsible For The Holocaust
Ironic and disturbing. No matter what your position is on the Palestine Israeli Conflict, shouldn’t you be arguing your point based on the facts, not distorting history, especially when it comes to the Holocaust, and especially if you’re the prime minister of Israel? Beenish Ahmed reports,
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a press conference with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2015.
Holocaust experts are accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of rewriting history by claiming that Palestinians gave Hitler the idea for his genocidal campaign against European Jews.
Referring to attacks on European Jews before the official outbreak of World War II in 1939, Netanyahu said that the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, “instigated” the killings.
“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?’ [Hitler] asked. [al-Husseini] said, ‘Burn them.’”
Holocaust historians and political officials in Israel and around the world have been quick to decry the inaccuracies Netanyahu recounted to the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem. They have called his remarks “dangerous historical distortion” and “a great shame.”
The initial plan to carry out a mass killing of European Jews came up in 1939 — long before Hitler met with al-Husseini in 1941, Meir Litvak, a professor at Tel Aviv University, told the Israeli news site Ynet.