How did he ever think he could possibly get away with it? It truly boggles the mind.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who over the past few years has given proof that he’d fit in well as a rhetorical brinksmanship-practicing politician in the United States, suggested in some comments that the REAL reason Adolf Hitler decided to give the orders to murder every Jewish man, woman and infant his troops could get their hands on was because a Palestinian leader gave him the idea.

Even the current German government flatly rejected his new version of history.

It’s a statement that anyone who has even read the most basic books on Adolf Hitler or the Holocaust knows is baloney. And Mr. Netanyahu more assuredly knows holocaust history. what the story is. So now a)he is backtracking b)people who like him or agree with him in typical political fashion are twisting themselves into pretzels trying to defend him or repeating the comment by the Palestinian — as if those words being uttered to Hitler were why Hitler did what he did. It’s not hard in 2015 to trace Hitler’s thinking, public utterances and what he had said to people in private since there’s a wealth of books for those who choose to read them.

As the Prime Minister of Israel most assuredly has done.

But politics is politics: whether it’s an American partisan trying to demonize or discredit their political foe or another party or an Israel Prime Minister worried about brutal terrorism involving young Palestinians in his country going on a stabbing spree and knifing Israelis. The Los Angeles Times:

If there is one place where the facts of the Holocaust are rarely contested, it is Israel. On Wednesday, however, public debate raged over comments by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who claimed that a key Palestinian cleric was a driving force behind Adolf Hitler’s attempt to exterminate the Jews.

Addressing the World Jewish Congress in Jerusalem on Tuesday, on the eve of his departure for a trip to Germany, Netanyahu said that Haj Amin Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, had planted the seed of the Holocaust during a meeting with the Fuehrer.

“Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews,” Netanyahu said. “And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here.’ ‘So what should I do with them?'” he asked. He said, ‘Burn them.'”

His first statement is one disputed by many books. Hitler’s plan just didn’t include expelling Jews. He didn’t wake up one morning after talking to Palestianian and say: “Hey! That’s not a bad idea. Today I’ll start killing en mass and do what I can to eliminate Jewry.”

Netanyahu referred to a meeting that took place in November 1941 between Hitler and Husseini, a fierce Palestinian nationalist and Nazi sympathizer.

Books chronicle the fact Hitler’s plans took place way before 1941.

Husseini, said Netanyahu, had a “central role in fomenting the Final Solution,” the policy finalized at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

The comments caused an uproar Wednesday morning, infuriating both Israelis and Palestinians, who charged Netanyahu with rewriting history and exploiting the Holocaust for political gain.

But why is that a surprise now? President Barack Obama’s biggest ally in getting his deal with Iran passed was Netanyahu, who all but wore a RNC banner and spoke before the U.S. Congress, despite the Obama administration’s clear view that they didn’t want him to do so. This fits in with a political style. In the case of the Iran deal, his overt alliance with Congressional Republicans did what the Obama administration was having problems in doing: it united most Democrats and got them to back the Iran deal.

Netanyau’s comments sparked a mini-firestorm in Israel and beyond:

“Also the son of an historian must state facts accurately,” opposition leader Isaac Herzog said, in a reference to the prime minister’s late father, a prominent historian.

Herzog demanded that Netanyahu immediately correct what he called a “dangerous distortion of history” that reduced Hitler’s responsibility for Israel’s tragedy. Herzog warned that Netanyahu’s words “fall into the hands of Holocaust deniers like a ripe fruit,” and muddy Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians.

“Hitler did not need Husseini to order the killing of Jews,” Herzog added.

And this:

“Maybe Netanyahu wants to tell this to my relatives and another 200,000 Jews murdered in Lithuania before the mufti and Hitler met?” left-wing lawmaker Zehava Galon wrote on Facebook.

Indeed. When I was a kid my late grandfather Abraham Ravinsky would take me and my sister Nona and show us individually his photo album. He’d point to page after page of Ravinskys in Russia, men women and children. “Killed by Hitler…Killed by Hitler..Killed by Hitler,” he’d say in a steady voice as he pointed to each page. Most of the family was wiped out.

“I am ashamed for you,” added Galon, who said Netanyahu disgraced Israel by “dragging through the mud” the memory of the Jewish victims of Nazi atrocity. The lawmaker, a frequent critic of what she sees as government recalcitrance on the peace process, said “all that’s left for those who can’t work to change the future is to rewrite the past.”

Another opposition lawmaker, Dov Khenin, demanded that the prime minister retract his words and apologize for what he called a “distortion of history that joins the murky wave of Holocaust denial.” The lawmaker, who leads a parliamentary lobby for Holocaust survivors, said Netanyahu crossed all red lines in his efforts to “blame the Arabs for all injustices of the world and history.”

Palestinians too were incensed.

“It is a sad day in history when the leader of the Israeli government hates his neighbor so much … to absolve the most notorious war criminal in history,” said Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, urging Netanyahu to stop “using this human tragedy to score points for his political end.”

The German government made it clear it isn’t buying Netanyahu’s new version of history.

Germany on Wednesday said that responsibility for the Holocaust lay with the Germans, after Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sparked controversy before a visit to Berlin by saying a Muslim elder had convinced Adolf Hitler to exterminate Jews.

“All Germans know the history of the murderous race mania of the Nazis that led to the break with civilization that was the Holocaust,” Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said when asked about Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks.

“This is taught in German schools for good reason, it must never be forgotten. And I see no reason to change our view of history in any way. We know that responsibility for this crime against humanity is German and very much our own.”

So what’s happening now?

Spin control:

Before boarding a plane to Berlin he said, yes, Hitler was responsible, but the Palestinian leader at the time let Hitler know he wanted Jews dead.

Following the outcry those comments sparked, Netanyahu said before flying to Berlin for a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and on Thursday with US Secretary of State John Kerry, that he had no intention of absolving Hitler of his crimes.

Hitler, he said, is responsible for the Final Solution. But by the same token, he said, it is “absurd” to ignore the role played by the mufti in encouraging Hitler and his henchmen to murder the Jews.

“There is abundant proof of this,” he said, including testimony by Adolf Eichman’s deputy at the Nuremberg trials held after the war.

Netanyahu quoted Eichmann’s deputy as saying that the mufti played a role in the decision to destroy European Jewry; thought that this was a “reasonable solution to the Palestine question;” was one of the initiators of the systematic destruction of European Jewry; and was a partner and advisor to Hitler and Eichmann in implementing that plan.

Netanyahu said that the reason some researchers and others offer “apologetics” for al-Husseini is clear.

“My aim was not to absolve Hitler from the responsibility he bears, but to show that the father of the Palestinian nation at the time, without a state and before the ‘occupation,’ without the territories and with the settlements, even then aspired with systemic incitement for the destruction of the Jews,” Netanyahu said.

Unfortunately, Netanyahu added, the mufti continues to be an admired personality in Palestinian society, and is depicted in textbooks as the father of the Palestinian nation.

“And the incitement that began with him, incitement to kill Jews, continues,” the prime minister said. “Not in the same way, but in a different way, and that is the root of the problem. In order to stop the murder, you have to stop the incitement. It is important not to ignore the historical truths, not then, and not today.”

It’s the same kind of spin Americans are used to hearing on talk radio, or watching on increasingly tiresome ideological cable talk channels where partisans slip into defense lawyer mode when they defend the mistakes of themselves or partisans on their side. Or they repeat a concept that most know is patently false over and over and over and their defenders then repeat it because to some repetition of an assertion converts inaccuracies or exaggerations into fact.

Footnote to Mr. Netanyau. I’m now reading the 800 page book “The Holocaust Chronicle: A history in words and pictures.” I suggest you invest in this book and you’ll get a better idea of the chronology. I skipped ahead and did a quick scan and for some strange reason didn’t see a major chapter or any chapter devoted to how Hitler really only wanted to export Jews but a Palestinian one day inspired inspired Hitler to decide to wipe out the Jews. I didn’t read how if he was inspired by the Palestinian a good chunk of a state-run murder machine was already operating in Germany and in Poland. You need to alert the editors to include your documentation on this so they can revise the book.

Here’s the Amazon link, if you decide to order it:

Meanwhile, on Twitter:

Is quite a world when Merkel has to remind Netanyahu that Germany, not Palestine, was responsible for the Holocaust https://t.co/7KgodT6sb9

— Kaya Burgess (@kayaburgess) October 21, 2015

graphic via shutterstock.com

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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