Dina Porat, chief historian of Yad Vashem, the World Center for Holocaust Research, Documentation, Education and Commemoration, said that Netanyahu’s remarks were not “historically accurate”.
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But let’s pause for a second and think about what Netanyahu did, and in what context he did it. There is now a renewed wave of violence in Israel and Palestine. Palestinian attackers have murdered at least eight Israelis in multiple attacks, and more than 50 Palestinians have been killed, including about 20 said to be involved in the attacks and the others in clashes with Israeli security forces.
Addressing the 37th Zionist Congress in Jerusalem on Tuesday, Netanyahu said that Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini “had a central role in fomenting the Final Solution”. “Hitler was responsible for the Final Solution to exterminate six million Jews”, he said. “And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here, ‘” Netanyahu said during a speech to the Zionist Congress.
“It’s a very common pattern to “Nazify” your enemy because Nazism is a synonym for the ultimate evil, so by connecting your political opponent or enemy to Nazism you disqualify them”, said Motadel, “The term “Islamo-faschism” is part of this discourse”.
There were specific plans in place for al-Husseini and his allies to greet the invading German armies to provide support once they reached the southern exit of the Caucuses. He has repeatedly suggested to the various authorities with whom he has been in contact, above all before Hitler, Ribbentrop and Himmler, the extermination of European Jewry. Therefore, he has chosen a historically fatal comparison for a different reason: He is drawing a long line from the Grand Mufti to President Abbas, a tradition of anti-Semitism, poised against Israel.
“…These plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp…” Cohen notes that one of Hitler’s main motivations was making Germany and all of occupied Europe judenrein (free of Jews).
Experts on World War 2 and the Holocaust, both inside and outside Israel, have also been highly critical of Netanyahu’s claim, saying it didn’t align with current knowledge of the period. “It cheapens the Holocaust”.
Al-Husseini recruited Bosnian Muslims to an Islamic unit of the SS which engaged in mass murder of Jews, and issued Arabic language broadcasts on Nazi radio.
“Hitler did not need Husseini to convince him”, said Prof. Many other scholars quote this testimony and other testimonies as to Hajj Amin al-Husseini’s role. Even if the mufti wanted the Final Solution to be expanded, he wasn’t the one who came up with the idea.
Opposition politicians have dismissed Mr Netanyahu’s assertion.
The first thing to say about Netanyahu’s historical narrative is that it is absurd.
When asked about Netanyahu’s comments, a spokesperson for German chancellor Angela Merkel told Reuters that the Nazi regime bore sole responsibility for the atrocities it perpetrated. Netanyahu tried to calm the uproar and clarify himself prior to his departure.
The Israeli prime minister of course knows that.
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“My intention was not to absolve Hitler of his responsibility, but rather to show that the forefathers of the Palestinian nation, without a country and without the so-called “occupation”, without land and without settlements, even then aspired to systematic incitement to exterminate the Jews”, he continued. “We know that there’s a fundamental German responsibility for this crime against humanity”. “Palestine will never forget, although it seems Netanyahu’s extremist government has”.
