Netanyahu causes uproar by linking Palestinians to Holocaust

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has created a storm of controversy for suggesting that a World War II-era Palestinian leader convinced the Nazis to adopt their Final Solution to exterminate European Jews. Netanyahu told a group of Jewish leaders on Tuesday that the Mufti of Jerusalem, Nazi sympathiser Haj Amin al-Husseini, convinced Hitler to destroy the Jews. The prime minister claimed al-Husseini said the Jews would “all come here (Palestine)”. According to Netanyahu, when asked what he should do, al-Husseini told Hitler: “Burn them.”

Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Holocaust experts are slamming Netanyahu’s comments as historically inaccurate. Critics today said the statement amounts to incitement against modern-day Palestinians in the midst of a wave of violent unrest and Israeli-Palestinian tensions. 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 at the fringes of Holocaust research but was rejected by most historians.

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