ISRAEL-NETANYAHU/HITLER Netanyahu stirs trouble by linking late Muslim leader to Holocaust

Record ID: 134785

  • Title: ISRAEL-NETANYAHU/HITLER Netanyahu stirs trouble by linking late Muslim leader to Holocaust
  • Date: 21st October 2015
  • Summary: JERUSALEM (OCTOBER 20, 2015) (REUTERS) ***WARNING CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER, BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, AT WORLD ZIONIST CONGRESS IN JERUSALEM AUDIENCE CLAPPING NETANYAHU SPEAKING AT CONGRESS (SOUNDBITE) (English) ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER, BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, SAYING: "Attacks on the Jewish community in 1920, 1921, 1929, were instigated by a call of the mu
  • Embargoed: 5th November 2015 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: West bank
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA46GZEF85VF7VD6N6FFFQXNDRZ
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu provoked a Holocaust controversy on Wednesday (October 21), hours before a visit to Germany, by saying that the Muslim elder in Jerusalem during the 1940s convinced Adolf Hitler to exterminate the Jews.
    In a speech to the Zionist Congress late on Tuesday, Netanyahu referred to a series of Muslim attacks on Jews in Palestine during the 1920s that he said were instigated by the then-Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.
    Husseini famously flew to visit Hitler in Berlin in 1941, and Netanyahu said that meeting was instrumental in the Nazi leader's decision to launch a campaign to annihilate the Jews.
    "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," Netanyahu said in a speech.
    "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 will all come here'," Netanyahu continued.
    "So what should I do with them?'" Netanyahu said Hitler asked the mufti, who responded: "Burn them."
    Netanyahu, whose father was an eminent historian, was quickly harangued by opposition politicians and experts on the Holocaust who said he was distorting the historical record.
    They noted the meeting between Husseini and Hitler took place on November 28, 1941. More than two years earlier, in January 1939, Hitler had addressed the Reichstag, Nazi Germany's parliament, and spoke clearly about his determination to exterminate the "Jewish race".
    "There is no connection between the Mufti's (referring to the Mufti of Jerusalem at the time, Haj Amin al-Husseini) ideas and Hitler's ideas," Dina Porat, a professor at Tel Aviv University and the chief historian of Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial museum, told said in an interview.
    "The Mufti had in mind asking Germany to include the killing, the destruction of the Jews in the land of Israel, in the Middle East and in North Africa in Hitler's final solution. This was his aim. No doubt about it. But it came in the meeting with Hitler which took place in November 1941, it came much later than the evolvement of the idea that Hitler had. Hitler was obsessed with the idea that the Jews are a danger to Germany, to Europe, to the World and they should be get rid of," Porat said.
    It is not clear why Netanyahu decided to launch into the issue now, but his remarks came with tensions between Israelis and Palestinians at a new peak, particularly over a Jerusalem holy site overseen by the current mufti.
    A German government spokesman, asked about Netanyahu's comments, said the Holocaust was Germany's responsibility and there was no need for another view on it.
    Palestinian officials said Netanyahu appeared to be absolving Hitler of the murder of six million Jews in order to lay the blame on Muslims. Twitter was awash with criticism.
    Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said Netanyahu was aiming to change history.
    "Now he says Hitler is not responsible, this story of his serves us and the Jewish people all over the world so they can know the bad usage (of facts) that sometimes aim to hurt us and hurt our positions, in this very low, scummy fashion, that aims to change history and this is their history, the crimes were committed against them," Abbas said at a news conference in Ramallah with United Nations Secretary Ban Ki-Moon, who came to the region to press for an Israel-Palestinian calm amid the recent wave of violence.
    The current Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Hussein, also criticised Netanyahu's comments.
    "These comments do not reflect responsibility (of) Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was a leader to the Palestinian people and led the struggle of the Palestinian people to end the British Mandate and to face the Zionist movement which was obviously active and was supported by the British mandate to establish a Jewish state for Jews in Palestine ignoring the Palestinian people. Haj Amin is like all the Palestinian leaders who is responsible for defending Palestine and the rights of the Palestinian people and have no interest to eradicate the Jewish nation or another nation," he told Reuters in Jerusalem.
    Responding to the criticism, Netanyahu said on Wednesday there was "much evidence" to back up his accusations against Husseini, including testimony by a deputy of Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Holocaust, at the Nuremberg war crimes trials after World War Two.
    Netanyahu, in a statement issued by his office, did not name the aide, but he seemed to be referring to Eichmann assistant Dieter Wisliceny, who has been quoted in news reports dating back to the late 1940s as having told the war crimes court that Husseini repeatedly suggested the extermination of European Jews to Nazi leaders.
    He dismissed any notion that he was absolving Hitler of responsibility for the Holocaust.
    "It is absurd. I had no intention to absolve Hitler of responsibility for his diabolical destruction of European Jewry. Hitler was responsible for the Final Solution to exterminate six million Jews. He made the decision," he said.
    But he added: "At the same time, it is equally absurd to ignore the role played by the Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a war criminal, for encouraging and urging Hitler, Ribbentropp, Himmler and others, to exterminate European Jewry. There is much evidence about this, including the testimony of Eichmann's deputy at the Nuremberg trials, not now, but after World War Two."
    Husseini was sought for war crimes but never appeared at the Nuremberg trials, and later died in Beirut.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register