Netanyahu’s Pro-Nazi Lie: ‘Hitler wanted to expel the Jews.’

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“Netanyahu: Hitler didn't want to exterminate Jews”

RT published Oct 21, 2015

Netanyahu (0:25-): “Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time [28 November 1941]; he wanted to expel the Jews.”

This statement by Israel’s Prime Minister is profoundly false; the record is clear on this matter: Hitler merely played along with Hjalmar Schacht and others who favored expulsion of Jews in preference to annihilating them; Nazis who expected all Jews ultimately to leave Germany were a significant part of Hitler’s constituency, and Hitler wanted their full cooperation at least until the “final solution” was beyond being any longer denied; he needed the services of all Nazis and of all Nazi-supporters, until he was ready to spring his trap (the extermination-program for Jews).

Here is how I had discussed this matter, on pages 218-219 of my 2000 book Why the Holocaust Happened:

The consensus with which he started was only for the elimination of the Jews, which could mean either expulsion or extermination. (Sterilizing the Jews was ruled out by Hitler: as an alternative to extermination, it might have drawn too much support.) Expulsion obviously had to be presented as having been tried but failed; only then could the entire hierarchy unite behind Hitler’s plan to carry out God’s “admonition finally to put an end to the permanently continuous original sin of a race poisoning and to give the Almighty Creator beings as He Himself created them.” Mere expulsion could provide no such assurance. But a display nonetheless had to be made.

By January 1939, Hitler’s official policy was for the expulsion of all Jews. By June 1940, it was for their expulsion specifically to Madagascar — a goal even less practicable than expulsion itself, since the “Madagascar Plan” required as prerequisites the defeat of both France and England, and could thus realistically not even be considered as a short-term measure which is what it was presented as being. Hitler knew better. And along the way, he skillfully set up numerous highly visible public displays of the unwillingness of foreign nations to accept the flood of dispossessed Jews that he was offering as refugees. (As Rudolph Binion noted in his 1976 Hitler Among the Germans, pp. 29-30, Hitler had even fired Reichsbank chief Hjalmar Schacht early in 1939 because Schacht had been too effective in promoting the expulsion of Jews; and both Binion, and Richard Breitman’s 1991 The Architect of Genocide, pp. 50-1, documented that even Hitler had acknowledged that expulsion of Jews was really intended as nothing more than “exporting anti-Semitism.”) Hitler gleefully observed the embarrassment of other countries that proclaimed their opposition to anti-Semitism but that turned a cold shoulder to these desperate refugees. Hitler was trying expulsion; other nations just refused to receive what he was offering them. The United States, for example, not only did not increase its immigration-quota for Jews; it failed even to admit as many Jews as the official quota permitted. David S. Wyman’s 1984 The Abandonment of the Jews documents (pp. 100, 365, 410) the repeated refusal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to meet with Jewish leaders to deal with the problem, and also establishes the President’s own personal knowledge of the Nazis’ anti-Semitic exterminations. For Hitler, such international response was itself part of the “sleepwalking” toward genocide. By the time of the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942 to coordinate the actions of all state agencies involved with the “final solution,” all participants were reading their respective roles from a playbook written by none other than the Führer himself. And by that time, they were all prepared for those roles — knew them by heart, actually. When three days later, on 23 January, Hitler in his Secret Conversations (Table-Talk) addressed Himmler sarcastically about the matter, Himmler understood very well what he meant by saying of his policy toward the Jews, “I’m extraordinarily humane. . . . But if they refuse to leave voluntarily, I see no other solution than extermination.”

The Jews never were to be expelled; the entire world was to be made Judenrein.

Here is how universal Hitler’s anti-Semitism was: As recounted in Gerald Fleming’s 1984 Hitler and the Final Solution (p. 104), Hitler on 28 November 1941, promised the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem that, following the defeat of Britain, the Nazis would take care of “the Jews living in” Palestine. Obviously, those Jews were not in Germany, and not even in Europe.

The universalism of this policy was, itself, a sign of its religious origin: Hitler, like any fundamentalist, was convinced of the universality of the moral principles that motivated him. This universalism was shared by the medieval Crusaders who had sought to win the world to God. For Hitler, it was not enough merely to “purify” Germany; his vision was global because it was universal, founded upon the bedrock moral principles with which he had been raised. Adolf Hitler was a Crusader.

One might reasonably be uncertain, however, regarding the extent to which Hitler was actually concerned with anyone’s welfare but his own; after all, the Holocaust was his personal ticket to salvation — an eternity in heaven rather than in the Jews’ hell where he would be surrounded by other “people of the devil.” If the cost of his ticket of eternal membership was to be the deaths of millions — not only Jews, but others that he viewed as imperfect, diseased, defective, and not such as to “give the Almighty Creator beings as He Himself created them” — then so much the better; for all these were “people of the devil”; Hitler’s God would smile upon his great service in carrying out upon them the vengeance of the Lord. The more horrifying that vengeance, the better.

One possible hypothesis to explain Netanyahu’s false assertion there, would be sheer ignorance of history on his part, but for Israel’s long-serving head-of-state to be that ignorant of why the Holocaust happened, would mean he’s a fool, and Netanyahu is a highly intelligent person.

Another possible hypothesis would be that he’s driven by hatred of Muslims. This hypothesis is consistent with all the evidence regarding him, including that video-clip. The full video-clip shows Netanyahu saying (in this speech, which was delivered on 20 October 2015: “[This attack and other attacks on the Jewish community in 1920, 1921, 1929] were instigated by a call of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was later sought for war crimes, in the Nuremberg trials because he had a central role in fomenting the final solution, he flew to Berlin, Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews and Haj Amin al-Husseini said, ‘If you expel them, then they’ll all come here. So, what should I do with them,’ he asked. He [Hitler] said, ‘Burn them’.” Netanyahu was there blaming the Holocaust on Muslims, not on Christians (even though it was actually planned and carried out not only by German Christians but by Christians in many other countries, which the Roman Catholic Hitler was leading in this entire vast enterprise). The idea that the Mufti, whom Hitler had never even met until so late as 28 November 1941, inspired him to commit the Holocaust, which had already actually started before that meeting, is ludicrous. A person as intelligent as Netanyahu, is almost certainly lying to assert it. Either that, or else he’s insane.

According to the only surviving official record of what transpired at the Mufti-Hitler meeting, which was that of the Reich Chancellory, Hitler and the Mufti actually discussed many things on that occasion, not only Jews, and there is no indication whatsoever that the promise for “the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere” after the anticipated Nazi win of WW II, came from the Mufti; it was instead, as described there, offered by Hitler to, and greatly appreciated by, the Mufti. Netanyahu’s assertion that Hitler was asked by the Mufti, “What should I do with them,” and that Hitler instructed him “Burn them,” is pure fabrication, without basis in the only surviving record that was made at the time. The Christian Hitler had planned the Holocaust, and his plan for it included various stages; it didn’t just appear to him all at once or as just one idea or one act — nor did the Mufti give the idea to him on 28 November 1941, nor ever.

Netanyahu’s Minister of Justice is his long-time close friend and former aide, Ayelet Shaked, who is a blatantly racist hater of Palestinians, hardly different in her beliefs than Hitler was in his, except for what the target is, and what the surrounding system of constraints is within which to be a successful politician, not only nationally, but also internationally. Netanyahu might himself be as racist against Palestinians as is his chosen Justice Minister. But, in any case, he’s certainly a liar: Hitler, and not the Grand Mufti, planned and initiated and carried out the extermination of Jews.

Victoria Richards wrote in Britain’s Independent, on 21 October 2015 (the same day as RT’s video of that excerpt from the speech which had been delivered the prior day), an excellent article placing into a broader context Netanyahu’s blaming the Holocaust on Muslims, headlining, “Netanyahu's claims that a Palestinian leader was to blame for the Holocaust have been debunked before: In 2012, he described Haj Amin al-Husseini as 'one of the leading architects of the Final Solution' in a Knesset speech.” In that speech, on 24 January 2012, Netanyahu had said:

Haj Amin al-Husseini was one of the architects of the Final Solution. He traveled to Berlin. He lobbied and implored Hitler, as was stated by Adolf Eichmann's deputy at the Nuremberg trials, and this is documented in other sources, and persuaded him more than anyone else to carry out the Final Solution. Not to allow the Jews to leave lest they come here but to annihilate them, to incinerate them.

Interestingly, on that occasion, Netanyahu had alleged that the idea to “burn” or “incinerate” the Jews didn’t come from Hitler but from Husseini himself. At least, Netanyahu softened that lie, when he repeated it three years later.

However, even the racist-fascist (or ideologically nazi — meaning not necessarily a member of Germany’s Nazi Party, but any follower of the racist-fascist ideology it represented, and this ideological term “nazi” refers also to KKK, etc., including bigoted Jews, such as) Netanyahu — even Israel’s current racist-fascist Prime Minister — doesn’t allege that Hitler and Husseini had ever met together prior to 28 November 1941. And, Hitler’s mass-killing centers were already operating prior to "Weimar, Nov. 25, '41 8:58 a.m” (that’s three days prior to the Mufti-Hitler meeting) when Dr. Friedrich Mennecke, at Buchenwald, wrote, to his wife, telling her that the killing of “1200 Jews” had been done in Buchenwald that day, November 25th, without even examining the “patients,” but instead as “a purely theoretical job” (i.e., on the basis of racist-fascist ideology); and, that, in addition, “After the Jews come about 300 Aryans as 3rd portion, who again will have to be ‘examined’,” before they, too, might (perhaps the next day) be declared unfit to live, and sent directly to slaughter.

Whereas the famous Hitler-apologist David Irving says that Hitler wasn’t to blame for the Holocaust because Goebbels had somehow inspired him to do it if it had been done at all, Benjamin Netanyahu says that Hitler wasn’t to blame for the Holocaust because the Mufti had somehow inspired Hitler to do it.

Netanyahu is almost certainly not as stupid as he pretends to be, but he apparently knows that his voters are — and, for an extremely successful far-right Prime Minister, this is (based upon the available evidence) all that really matters to him. It’s a successful tactic to help whip-up, amongst Israel’s Jews, the hatred of Muslims, that had earlier been expressed by Netanyahu’s now chosen-and-serving Minister of Justice, Ayelet Shaked. This is Netanyahu’s way of spreading to other Israelis his own type of nazism (against Muslims, especially in Israel), which is already common enough in Israel to have gotten him elected as that nation’s leader.

On 21 October 1941, a month prior to meeting with the Mufti, Hitler, in the privacy of his bunker, concluded a long tirade against Jews (as transcribed in his Table-Talk) by saying: “By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea.” Hitler’s buddy, Himmler, stated, in a speech to top SS leaders, two years later, when the Holocaust was in full swing, on 4 October 1943, that this extermination was necessary for them to carry out, in order to have “exterminated a bacterium because we do not want in the end to be infected by the bacterium and die of it.” Hitler had stated, on various occasions, that the “Jewish infection” or “Jewish bacterium” or “blood-poisoning by Jews,” was transmitted to non-Jews in their “blood,” and so Jews must be entirely eradicated like plague-carrying rats — not only in Germany, but beyond. Hitler said, on 24 February 1943: “This fight will not end with the planned annihilation of the Aryan [which to him meant the descendants of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3] but with the extermination of the Jew [which to him meant the descendants of the snake in Genesis 3] in Europe. Beyond this, thanks to this fight, our movement’s world of thought will become the common heritage of all people.” Hitler had gotten his idea of the “Thousand-Year Reich” from Revelation 20:1-7. To him it came from “The Bible — Monumental History of Mankind,” which told this “History” not merely past, but also future, even beyond the next thousand years. One could say that it was Hitler’s sect of Christianity, but nothing really was original in it. And it certainly wasn’t Muslim (such as Netanyahu repeatedly suggests it to have been).

To Hitler, Palestinians were fighting the good fight, regardless of what their motivation for it was. He didn’t care what the Mufti’s motivation was (and it was far different from Hitler’s on this matter), but only that the Palestinians would keep up, and be determined to win, their war against that territory’s Jews.

False statements are common from all fascists, including Netanyahu, but the history here is clear. The history on this matter is incontrovertible. It is not in dispute. All that is even in question is whether Netanyahu is a liar, or whether instead he’s insane.

However, whatever he is, his apologetics for Hitler are especially understandable from him if he, Netanyahu, is seen as being an ideological brother-in-arms of Hitler — two racist-fascists — and consequently as Netanyahu ‘justifying’ himself thereby, and not only as his expressing a surprisingly sympathetic view regarding the actual initiator, planner, and overseer, of the anti-Jewish Holocaust.

There is no reason why a Jew cannot be also a nazi — but only an uncapitalized one, only an ideological nazi. There can be (and are) racist fascists in all ethnicities, religions, and nations, and against any ethnicity, religion, or nation. Actual good and evil aren’t properties of any of them. The claim that they are, that some groups are morally superior to other groups, is a basic part of their common Big Lie, because all truthful evaluations are about individual persons instead of about any groups they belong to. And that Big Lie — the allegation that some groups are better than others, that moral attributes (“better than” or “worse than”) belong to groups instead of only to individuals — might be as common today, as it was then. Israel’s current Prime Minister is merely an example of it. Hitler thought that non-Jews are better than Jews. Netanyahu thinks that Jews are better than non-Jews. But it’s all false. And the lie was common enough in 1930s Germany, and in today’s Israel, to have gotten both Hitler and Netanyahu elected to lead their nation.

Thus, too, the Nazis who tried to kill Hitler were heroes, and the Jews who try to shift Hitler’s blame onto others are the opposite — simply Jewish nazis — regardless of whether they are liars, or insane.

Victims and perpetrators of nazism — racist fascism — can be of any ethnicity, religion, or etc. No one is safe from nazism, and all nazis need to lie in order to succeed, because racist fascism simply cannot be based upon truth. It’s not just Hitler and other racist Christians against Jews, and Netanyahu and other racist Jews against Muslims. For example, another lying far-right Christian, Stephen Bannon, of Donald Trump’s campaign and Administration, is explicitly bigoted against Muslims, not against Jews — he is a Roman Catholic like Hitler, but an anti-Muslim like Netanyahu, and this was shown on 11 August 2017 by Peter Maass at The Intercept, headlining “Steve Bannon Said He Learned to Fear Muslims When He Visited Pakistan. Except He Was Probably in Hong Kong.” And, to cite yet another religion, Hinduism: on 13 July 2017, Prem Singh, of the Socialist Party of India, bannered “The Implications of Ramnath Kovind’s Presidency”, and he noted that India’s conservative BJP party and the RSS Hindu-nationalist movement were uniting, and Singh wrote that:

The governor of Tripura recently tweeted that Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, founder of Jan Sangh, had suggested that Hindu-Muslim strife could only be resolved through civil war. A civil war for a Muslim-free India may seem far-fetched right now; but … the way educated, well off/cultured Hindus are falling easy victims to Islamophobia, it doesn’t seem like they have learnt any lessons from the tragedy of Partition. Emotional claims about family and children will not hold against civil war. Hasn’t Modi left his family, and even his wife, for the ‘Hindu Rashtra’? As the noose of neo-imperialism tightens, the hate-mongering against Muslims and Christians will also rise. Other minority religious communities will also get caught in this hate mania. The failure to become either modern or world citizens, will be compensated by BJP-RSS by installing ‘Hindu president’, ‘Hindu prime minister’, ‘Hindu government’, ‘Hindu development’, ‘Hindu technology’, ‘Hindu knowledge’ and so on, in the ‘Hindu Rashtra’. … The RSS will gun for its long-awaited agenda of dispossessing the Muslims, already dispossessed of democracy.

The lies, and the targets, and the victims, differ; but the ideology is the same: racist fascism. It’s common in many countries.

About the author

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.