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Itongadol.- Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu doubled down on the claim he made Tuesday in a speech, according to which Adolf Hitler did not want to annihilate the Jews but to expel them, and it was Mufti Hajj Amin Al Husseini who convinced him to murder them.
Accusations by leftist politicians, that he had absolved Hitler from blame for the Holocaust, were "absurd," he said.
"I had no intention of absolving Hitler for his diabolical responsibility for the annihilation of the Jews of Europe," Netanyahu told reporters before flying to Germany. "Hitler is responsible for the Final Solution for annihilating the Six Millions; he made the decision.
"By the same token," he argued, "it is absurd to ignore the role that the Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini, a war criminal, played in encouraging Hitler, Ribbentrop, Himmler and others, to annihilate the Jews of Europe. There are numerous testimonies to this, including that of Eichmann\’s deputy in the Nuremberg trials, not now but after World War Two."
"He said: \’The Mufti played a role in the decision to annihilate the Jews of Europe. One must not ignore the importance of his role. The Mufti repeatedly suggested to the authorities he was in touch with, and first and foremost to Hitler, Ribbentrop and Hitler, to annihilate the Jews of Europe. He saw that as a proper solution for the Palestinian question.\’
"And Eichmann\’s deputy added: \’The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic destruction of Europe\’s Jews, and was a partner and advisor to Eichmann and Hitler in carrying out this plan,\’" Netanyahu said.
Sniping back at his critics, he added: "This attempt by certain researchers and certain personages to provide apologetics for the central and important role Hajj Amin Al-Husseini played, is clear. Many other researchers cite this testimony and others, regarding the role played by Hajj Amin Al-Husseini.
"My goal was not to absolve Hitler for the responsibility he bears, but to show that the father of the Palestinian at that time, with no [Jewish] state and no so-called \’occupation,\’ no territories and no settlements, already sought, through systematic incitement, to annihilate the Jews. Regrettably, Hajj Amin al-Husseini is still a venerated figure in Palestinian society, he appears in study books and is exalted as the father of the nation, and this incitement that began then, incitement to kill Jews, continues. Not in the same form, in a different form, and it is the root problem. To stop the murder, the incitement must stop."