No. This is not The Onion. And to make it more farcical, Bibi said it last night, in a speech in English at the World Zionist Congress: (there's a video in the link as well)
In a speech before the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem, Netanyahu described a meeting between Husseini and Hitler in November, 1941: "Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jew. 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." The only true bit in this new piece of outrageous racist incitement from Bibi, is that the Mufti did meet Hitler at that time - the only interview Hitler had ever granted him - and that he was a fan of the Nazis; a rather marginal and inconsequential one at that. In fact, as anyone who studied the matter even at minimal length knows, systematic mass extermination of Jews started in June 1941 - 5 months before said meeting - with special SS units following on the heels of the German army as it invaded the USSR, quickly murdering about half a million people, almost all of them Jewish.The Interwebs are in uproar, which is why I'm surprised this wasn't blogged here yet. Here's a collection of memes and other responses. I'm placing one here from "John Brown".
It should be mentioned that Bibi is the son of a historian, whose own academic importance has been inflated while his son has been in power.But once again, Mission Accomplished: Bibi manages to change the conversation, to further conflate Israel and Holocaust victims, Israel's current adversaries and the Nazis, and to put a dent into Palestinians' sharpest historical point about 1948: that in the long view, they have been made to pay for the unspeakable atrocities of the Europeans.
The truth? Responsibility? Respect for the office? Respect for the victims? If you're asking these questions, you obviously haven't been following Bibi and our recent governments in general.
A secondary aside: I wonder what the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, a bunch of Bibi fans who themselves have been happy to wield the "Antisemitism" canard at Israel's critics, but who are still respected as authorities on racism and in particular the Holocaust, its denial and its abuse - will do now.
And... the ADL found its "respectable" exit (h/t Paleo in the comments below):
att@JGreenblattADL We must always be careful in talking about the Holocaust.Even if unintended, the PM's words trivialize Hitler's role If a wrist is slapped ever-so-softly in the forest, does anyone hear it? "Unintended" your butt.8:30 PDT UPDATE: -------------------------------------------
Here's a great Tweet translated from Hebrew by Mairav Zonszein, that sums up Bibi's arc of lies as he keeps his eyes on the big prize, namely demonizing Palestinians and distracting from the Occupation:
"There is no Palestinian people, and, they are responsible for the Holocaust." https://t.co/...
— Mairav Zonszein (@MairavZ) אוק׳ 21, 2015...and, since I've seen it pop up - twice! - in the comments, no, there is no "grain of truth" in Bibi's disgusting racist lie, beyond what is specified at the diary's start. Palestinians controlled no territory, certainly no territory where Nazis ruled, and so they could not have "facilitated the Final Solution" as one commenter wrote. In fact, despite his pompous manner, the Mufti was already in exile, a has-been as far as events back home were concerned. Palestinian Arabs, regardless of the Mutfi's despicable personal efforts in Europe, were largely neutral during the war, with quite a few of them even enlisting or providing services to the British military.
There is neither official record nor direct testimony of Hitler's courtesy meeting with the Mufti, and the idea that the go-it-alone egomaniacal Hitler, already very far along on the Final Solution path (in addition to the mass executions in the USSR, the Chelmno death camp started exterminating Jews with gas only weeks later) - the idea that Hitler would 1. still be clueless about "what to do with all those Jews", and 2. listen to the advice of a non-Aryan marginal fanboy whom he'd never met before, and change a major part of his operative plans as a result -
- if you believe that, you will likely believe anything coming out of Bibi's mouth, or in general anything that demonizes Palestinians.
To the precious few who made such comments or believe any of that: sorry, I might not be able help you, but you really need to examine your mindset on this. Take it as a teachable moment.