Thanks, Ali Abunimah. This is really needed.
Thank you again.

I agree with this in its entirety.

If it's true then Netanyahu should hang his head in shame because it was the Zionists who made Haj al Amin Husseini the Mufti after he came 4th in the election to the post of Grand Mufti in 1921. The British High Commissioner Sir Herbert Samuel, who had been instrumental in lobbying for the Balfour Declaration, appointed him because the Zionists loved this chauvinist and feudal Arab leader.

The Mufti met Hitler in November 1941 but the final solution began with Operation Barbarossa the previous June when the killing squads, Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos and Order Police, operated in the wake of the Wehrmacht in White Russia and Ukraine. At the beginning of December 1941 the first extermination camp Chelmno had opened and Belzec started in March 1942. Experimentation with murder by gas had taken place in September 1941 in Auschwitz when 850 Russian prisoners of war and Poles had been murdered. So of course it is a lot of nonsense but it is also an attempt to paint the Palestinians as accomplices to the Nazis,, something Yad Vashem also does.

E.g. in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust the Mufti has the second longest entry, longer than Goebbels and Goering combined and only slightly shorter than Hitler's. In fact he was a minor war criminal and the Muslim SS divisions he recruited in Bosnia didn't take part in the deportations of Jews. That was left to the SS and Croatian SS. Indeed so 'bad' was their attitude to the Jewish question that they were sent for 'retraining' to France where they promptly deserted to the Resistance. The only known example of a rebellion amongst the SS. This was primarily because they only joined up because they thought it was a gendarme and as a means of attacking Serb nationalists.

Unfortunately, this isn't new. Israeli propaganda is so bent on demonizing Palestinians that even Hitler's genocide can be watered down in the interest of the State. In 2004, Malcolm Hoenlein (of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations) told an audience in Toronto that the Mufti, not Hitler, initiated the idea of murdering Jews, and "Hitler followed the wishes of the Mufti." I've even heard this whopper repeated by other religious Zionists. If you want to go where Israel goes, you've got to check your mind at the door, along with your conscience.

It's true that the Mufti opposed sending more Jews to Palestine, but if that was genocidal, what can be said about all the other countries that barred or limited Jewish immigration during the same period (and had far less to lose than Palestinians did)? And what about Avraham Stern, who openly sought an alliance with the Germans during World War II? Does that make his lieutenant Yitzchak Shamir an author of the Final Solution?

One thing this proves is how little Israeli leaders and apologists really care about Jews. As Norman Finkelstein has said for years, people who make such claims whitewash Nazism and, in the end, foment anti-Semitism as their listeners recoil from the vulgar falsification and manipulation of Jewish suffering by powerful Jews in the service of Israeli expansionism.

Here we go again: as the onslaught on Palestinians continue unabated and Zionist society begins to show its ugly face, Bibi comes up with a hat trick-lie...and the world falls for it by giving it credence through the printed word, which, I am sure, will be followed by TV and Radio discussions.

But, but, but ... Israel says there is no such thing as Palestinians!!!!!!!! I am soooooooooooo confused now! :)

I am glad Netanyahu exposed himself for the psychopath that he is. Maybe this will wake up more people to the evil sick country that Israel is, and the fact it is led willingly by a madman.

This article was so badly needed today, when history is being re-written by Netanyahu to such an alarming extent.

When Netanyahu makes such despicable comments, no wonder "settlers" feel they have been given full permission by the State to illegally seize Palestinian land or, worse, to kill their indigenous neighbours.

It's frightening that a Prime a Minister would even consider trying to get away with such a preposterous theory, he's guilty of the kind of propaganda once associated with the likes of Hitler and Stalin.

With words like these at a time of such strife and turmoil, 'Bibi' has yet more blood on his hands.

And people wonder why Palestinians struggle to negotiate with the Zionists who have stolen their land?

A good account of what is happening is described in Idith Zertal’s book ‘Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood’ (Cambridge University Press). (p.102) This attitude of equating the Mufti's behaviour, which wasn't particularly different from that of Subra Chandra Bose, the leader of the Indian National Army who fought the British alongside the Japanese or the leaders of the Burmese Independence movement. They operated on the basis that the enemy of their colonial enemy was their friend.

Contrary to the Zionists' campaign there was relatively little support for the Nazis in the Arab countries during the war, since Hitler's racial theories weren't particularly appealing nor was his regime. In addition it was obvious that it was Hitler's anti-Semitism which was driving Jewish emigration to Palestine. Support such a regime was particular madness.

A good book on this is 'Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism' by Israel Gershoni ed. of Tel Aviv University, which is totally unlike the usual hasbarist attempts to label Arab nationalism as being equivalent to German nationalism.

Ive done a post on Netanyahu's speech which can be found at Netanyahu Exonerates Hitler of Responsibility for the Holocaust http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2....

The Mufti was a war criminal, albeit a minor war criminal. However no Palestinian ever voted for him. He was appointed by the British and the Zionists and was rightly seen as a collaborator. His actions, the radio broadcasts, the attempts to prevent the emigration of Jewish children from Nazi occupied territories and his recruiting of Muslim SS Divisions (even though they rebelled and weren't involved in the Jewish question) are still indefensible.

It is important to note that when Netanyahu makes a speech like this in English his target audience ultimately are the financiers of Israeli brutality – the American tax payer. It is to the working men and women of the US that say: if you are so over worked and so ill informed that you don’t have the time or energy to educate yourself on the current issues of state – in this case by acquainting yourself with such seminal works as Raul Hilberg’s The Destruction of European Jewry mentioned elsewhere in a responses to this article – then you must concede that you no longer live in a free society, and your taxes no longer represent you or what you know to be true and good.

Once again Netanyahu’s version of history, while not original, is absurd to the extent that it defies common sense. Mr. Abuunimah your article is excellent in exposing this very dangerous lie. Thank you.

It was in one arena, the armed forces, where Hitler's policies were never 100% consequential. When the first anti-Jewish laws were promulgated (transient) exceptions were made for Jewish veterans of WW1. Males with one or two Jewish grandparents served in the Wehrmacht until it was stopped at Moscow in the winter of 1941. However General Milch who had two Jewish grandparents was allowed to serve on. He became in charge of the "areal support" of Stalingrad. Milch was no exception. Here is a partial list of "Aryanized/Deutschbluetig" (by Hitler himself) soldiers. Ernst Bloch (colonel), Werner Maltzahn (general), Helmuth Wilberg (general), Paul Ascher (commander on the Bismarck), Johannes Zuckertort (general), Karl Zuckertort (general). Also many more of lower ranks.

There is a book on this. They were basically Mischlinge - Germans with 1 or 2 Jewish grandparents and Hitler made about 300 into Aryans. Not just the army. It included a number of civil servants including Ministerialrat Killy of the Fuhrer Chancellery, who was a second degree mischlinge.

Jews actually served on the front in the Hungarian army, both as members of the Labour batallions and some in the Hungarian armed forces, who were decimated by the Russians at Voronezh.

Although Tony Greenstein does mention Gibert Achcar's book The Arabs and the Holocaust, I would emphasise its importance. I read it, and several others, to find out why Germans kept mentioning the 'Mufti of Jerusalem' when I spoke of the Palestinian struggle for justice (as they now introduce 'Hamas' when I speak of Gaza).
The Arabs and the Holocaust is especially valuable because Gilbert Achcar is a speaker of Arabic, who understood the material - letters, radio transcripts, newspapers, documents, etc. - available in many Arab countries regarding their relationships with Arab Jews, how the arrival of Zionism gradually changed these relationships, and conflicts that thus arose with the British. Achcar also describes the Mufti, how he was regarded by Palestinians and other Arabs, qualifying and contradicting versions disseminated by Zionists and the press in most Western countries - which has obviously coloured German's knowledge (the little they know) of Palestinian history.
I must say, however, that I am deeply shocked that Netanyahu would come to Germany and repeat such vile propaganda. I agree that this is a form of genocidal incitement. As much as I object to Merkel's constant coupling of Germany's raison d'être with Israel, I think she was also stunned and her firm rejection was good to hear. So there is a line Netanyahu cannot cross.

The timing of Netanyahu's ahistorical references to the Grand Mufti (who did the Palestinian struggle no favours) are no accident, but a desperate ploy to explain away the current violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank as 'anti semitism' rather than an explosive reaction of young Palestinians to decades of violence and misery inflicted on their society by a European Settler/Colonial regime intent on subjugation, land theft and apartheid.

This open and violent resistance of the young is already forcing a change to the terms of reference applied to the Palestine/Israel discourse, and this despite the continuing complicity of the European and American political elites in the settler/colonial project.

This

I don't see any primary sources in this article, just recycled claims.

Here's an article that quotes primary sources: http://carolynyeager.net/speci...