Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
20 October
WHEN ZIONIST HISTORICAL REVISIONISM WENT TOO FAR
On this day in 2015, Benjamin Netanyahu told the World Zionist Congress that Hitler only wanted to expel the Jews but was convinced to exterminate them by Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Prof. Meir Litvak, a historian at Tel Aviv University, called the speech “a lie” and “a disgrace.” Prof. Moshe Zimmermann, a specialist of German history at Hebrew University, said, “With this, Netanyahu joins a long line of people that we would call Holocaust deniers.”
عندما تذهب مراجعة الصهيونية للتاريخ حدا مبالغا
20 أكتوبر
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 2015، أبلغ بنيامين نتنياهو المؤتمر الصهيوني العالمي بأن هتلر أراد طرد اليهود فقط لكنه تم اقناعه بإبادتهم من قبل مفتي القدس الحاج أمين الحسيني. ووصف البروفيسور مئير ليتفاك المؤرخ في جامعة تل أبيب الخطاب بأنه "كذب" و "وصمة عار". وقال البروفسور موشيه زيمرمان، المتخصص في التاريخ الألماني في الجامعة العبرية، "بهذا، ينضم نتنياهو إلى سلسلة طويلة من الأشخاص الذين نسميهم ناكري المحرقة".
Netanyahu ridiculed over mufti Holocaust comments
Israeli PM’s comments about Palestinian mufti’s influence on Hitler dismissed by Holocaust experts. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been mocked and condemned for claiming Hitler did not intend to kill Jews until he was convinced to do so by a Palestinian mufti (Islamic scholar). Gershon Baskin, the founder of the Israel-Palestine Centre for Research and Information, told Al Jazeera the comments formed part of a strengthening narrative in Israel associating the Palestinian leadership with the Nazis.
Netanyahu accused of ‘absolving Hitler’
An overwhelming majority of Holocaust historians reject the notion that Husseini planted the idea of a “Final Solution” for Europe’s Jews in Hitler’s mind. Tom Segev, a leading Israeli historian who has conducted extensive research on the Holocaust, told The Times of Israel Wednesday that the notion that Hitler needed to be convinced to exterminate the Jews was “entirely absurd.”
Segev, born in Jerusalem to parents who escaped Nazi Germany in 1933, further stressed that by the time Husseini and Hitler met in 1941, the annihilation of the Jews had already begun. In fact, hundreds of thousands of Jews had been killed by the Nazis and their collaborators by the time of the meeting.
Israeli Government denial or recognition of other genocides, such as the Armenian genocide, was a cynical exercise in realpolitik. Since the early 1980s Israel's official position has been