UPDATE (8:25 AM PST): Netanyahu refuses to take back his false statements about Palestine, stating Wednesday: “My intention was not to absolve Hitler of his responsibility, but rather to show that the forefathers of the Palestinian nation, without a country and without the so-called ‘occupation’, without land and without settlements, even then aspired to systematic incitement to exterminate the Jews.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu practically exonerated Adolf Hitler in remarks made to a group of Jewish leaders Tuesday in which he effectively tried to blame Palestine for the Holocaust.

Aside from being historically inaccurate, as experts are saying, Netanyahu’s comments can be seen as an “incitement against modern-day Palestinians” as tensions continue to rise between Israel and Palestine.

From The Associated Press:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under fire for suggesting that a World War II-era Palestinian leader convinced the Nazis to adopt their Final Solution to exterminate European Jews. … Netanyahu told a group of Jewish leaders on Tuesday that the Mufti of Jerusalem, Nazi sympathizer Haj Amin al-Husseini, convinced Hitler to destroy the Jews.

“Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews,” Netanyahu said. When Hitler asked al-Husseini what to do, Netanyahu said he replied: “Burn them.”

Read more here.

—Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata

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