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Netanyahu's Holocaust gaffe on social media

Felix TamsutOctober 21, 2015

Ridicule has followed Benjamin Netanyahu's assertion that a Palestinian leader helped talk Hitler into the Holocaust. The Israeli prime minister, however, has doubled-down on his stance.

https://p.dw.com/p/1GsLr
Israel Benjamin Netanyahu
Image: Reuters/A. Cohen

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Adolf Hitler had wanted to expel Jews from Europe at first, not kill them, until a conversation with Jerusalem Mufti Hajj Amin Al-Husseini changed his mind. That speech was met with outrage across Israel and the Jewish world, with many people calling for him to backtrack from these claims.

Opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog posted a message on his facebook page calling the speech a "distortion of history," and added that it could be used by Holocaust deniers. Meretz party leader Zehava Galon wrote that her own family members had been persecuted and killed in Lithuania and said she was "ashamed" for Netanyahu.

Still, Netanyahu was able to find some support, including from British Colonel Richard Kemp.

Palestinians in particular were quite angry.

Many Israelis, too, took to social media to mock their prime minister's remarks, while others expressed their anger, with many criticizing Netanyahu for using the memory of the Holocaust as a political tool.