‘Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews,’ Netanyahu said [in a speech to the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem late on Tuesday]. ‘And Haj Amin al-Husseini [the then Mufti of Jerusalem] went to Hitler and said, ”If you expel them, they’ll all come here.”
“So what should I do with them?’’ Netanyahu said Hitler asked the mufti, who responded: “Burn them.”
(Reuters, October 21, 2015)
This is the incendiary way Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu framed his latest race-baiting attack against the Palestinian people.
Unsurprisingly, Palestinians condemned him. Here is how Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s secretary general, crystallized their condemnation:
It is a sad day in history when the leader of the Israeli government hates his neighbor so much that he is willing to absolve the most notorious war criminal in history, Adolf Hitler, of the murder of six million Jews.
(UK Guardian, October 21, 2015)
But I am heartened that Israelis, across the political spectrum, condemned him too. Here is how Moshe Yaalon, Netanyahu’s own defense minister, crystallized their condemnation:
It certainly wasn’t (Husseini) who invented the Final Solution. That was the evil brainchild of Hitler himself.
(Washington Times, October 21, 2015)
Not to mention that historians chastised him. Here is how Dina Porat, a professor at Tel Aviv University and the chief historian of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, crystallized their chastisement:
To say that the mufti was the first to mention to Hitler the idea to kill or burn the Jews is not correct.
The idea to rid the world of the Jews was a central theme in Hitler’s ideology a long, long time before he met the mufti.
(France 24, October 22, 2015)
But it speaks volumes about the egregious nature of Netanyahu’s remarks that Germans felt obliged to publicly accept eternal blame for the Holocaust … yet again. Here is how Steffen Seibert, spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel, crystallized their acceptance:
All Germans know the history of the murderous race mania of the Nazis that led to the break with civilisation that was the Holocaust.
(Haaretz, October 21, 2015)
If he had any shame, Netanyahu would apologize. But his record of race baiting against Palestinians is such that I expect no better of him than I do of Al Sharpton, famous for his notorious race baiting against Whites.
Indeed, I’ve had just cause to condemn Netanyahu twice this year alone for race baiting against Palestinians:
- In “Netanyahu’s Call for Jewish Exodus more Sharpton than Moses,” February 23, 2015, I condemned him for insinuating that Jews in Europe today are as oppressed as they were during the heyday of the Hitler’s Third Reich. Of course, the irony is completely lost on this self-righteous schmuck that he is oppressing Palestinians today even more than Hitler oppressed Jews … before executing his “final solution” to burn them.
- And in “Israel Votes to Become more Like (old) Apartheid South Africa,” March 18, 2015, I condemned him for exhorting Jews to rush to the election polls because too many Israelis of Arab descent were showing up to vote.
Meanwhile, these bullet points should make clear that, notwithstanding his public utterances of support, Netanyahu is as opposed to an independent state for Palestinians (the so-called “two-state solution”) as he is to an Israel in which they have equal rights. This is why anyone who knows anything about Israeli politics knows that there will be no peace between Israelis and Palestinians as long as he is prime minister.
But here is how I crystallized my longstanding condemnation of him in the commentary I referenced in that first bullet point:
The best way to get my disdain for Netanyahu’s politics is to understand that there’s no event too farcical or solemn for him to exploit for political gain or self-aggrandizement. This exploitation invariably has him playing the Holocaust card, which is why he can be fairly thought of as little more than Al Sharpton’s political brother from another mother.
Enough said?
Except that I would be remiss not to acknowledge Netanyahu’s intent. It is clearly to exploit the international sympathy Jews are receiving for the way Palestinians have been perpetrating ISIS-inspired knife attacks against them in recent weeks (aka “a new intifada for a new generation”).
No doubt I sympathize with the Jewish victims. What’s more, I reserve a fair amount of condemnation for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for exhorting Palestinians to perpetrate these attacks.
After all, here is how he hailed Palestinians who have been rioting for weeks now, purportedly defending their claim to the disputed holy site on the Temple Mount, which houses the famous al-Aqsa Mosque.
Every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure, every shahid [martyr] will reach paradise, and every injured person will be rewarded by God. The Al-Aqsa Mosque is ours…
They have no right to desecrate the mosque with their dirty feet, we won’t allow them to do that.
(Times of Israel, September 17, 2015)
I’m all too mindful, however, that the Apartheid-like way Netanyahu’s government lords over Palestinians in the Occupied Territories triggered these attacks. The way it facilitates expansion of Jewish settlements there, in brazen defiance of UN Resolutions, is particularly noteworthy.
Frankly, it’s not too difficult to understand why oppressed and hopeless Palestinians would choose “martyrdom,” which comes with knifing a Jew, over misery, which life under Israeli occupation has become.
Related commentaries:
Obama’s Iago…
Israel … like South Africa…