Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Hitler got the idea for the extermination of the Jews from a Palestinian leader, the mufti of Jerusalem, is continuing to draw widespread scorn, though leading American Jewish groups are trying to deemphasize the hatefulness of the comments.
Today Secretary of State John Kerry met Netanyahu in Berlin and appeared to criticize Netanyahu’s comments as a form of incitement:
We have to stop incitement, we have to stop the violence. And I think it’s critical. Obviously, this conversation that you and I will have is very important to settle on the steps that will be taken that take us beyond the condemnation and beyond the rhetoric. It is absolutely critical to end all incitement and all violence, and to find a road forward to build the possibility that is not there today for a larger process.
At yesterday’s press briefing at the State Department, State spox John Kirby characterized Netanyahu’s comments as “inflammatory” and “factually incorrect” and contradicted by “scholarly evidence.” A questioner suggested that Netanyahu was practicing Holocaust denial, but State didn’t rise to the challenge:
JOHN KIRBY: We’ve certainly seen and we’re aware of the prime minister’s statements. And as President Obama said, certainly Secretary Kerry has made clear, we want to stress publicly and privately the importance of preventing inflammatory rhetoric, accusations, or actions on both sides that can lead to violence...
QUESTION: Is it historically correct? Do you believe that —
MR KIRBY: I’m also not going to get into a historical debate about this. We’ve seen the press reports of his comments, and if you look at them they would connote that the scholarly evidence does not support that position...
QUESTION: … Come on. You stand at this podium day after day and you talk about incitement and the Palestinians incite something, and then the prime minister says something that is not only obviously factually incorrect but just so exploitative in this environment, and you’re dancing around the fact that it was inappropriate without just kind of saying what you’re hinting at, that these were inflammatory remarks that only contribute to the type of destabilization that you’re asking.
MR KIRBY: Right. No, Elise, I mean, I understand where you’re coming from. I’ve been, I think, consistent and I’m going to stay consistent that we’re not going to get into a characterization of each and every incident and each and every word spoken. What we want to see and we want – I think what we want to do is for everybody to take a few steps back, and we want to see the inflammatory rhetoric, we want to see inflammatory actions, we want to see provocative movements, all that stuff stop so that there can be an end to the violence, so that there can be some political breathing space for some real solutions.
QUESTION: (Off-mike.)
QUESTION: May I? When you go – I mean, you do say when there are Holocaust deniers and such, you’re quick to point out the inaccuracy of their statements. So I take it to mean that the reason that you’re not publicly criticizing it is because you think that this would just contribute to a bad climate of – what?
MR KIRBY: Well, I think I’m going to leave my answer the way it was. We’ve seen the press reports of the prime minister’s comments, and in those reports you can see for yourself the scholarly evidence obviously supports a different position. But again, what we – what needs to happen here and why the Secretary is going is to try to find ways – practical, tangible, concrete ways – to reduce the violence.
The Anti Defamation League has spoken out against Netanyahu’s remarks in the mildest possible manner:
We must always be careful in talking about the Holocaust.Even if unintended, the PM’s words trivialize Hitler’s role pic.twitter.com/7BM3Etvxi7
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) October 21, 2015
J Street is soft-peddling the prime minister’s remarks. It hardly touches on them when assailing Palestinian and Israeli leaders for practicing the blame game:
“[Palestinians] don’t want a state to end the conflict; because they want a state to continue the conflict and eradicate the Jewish state. This is what this conflict has always been about,” Netanyahu said. And the Holocaust rhetoric has been ramped up, too; in the same WZC speech, Netanyahu blamed the Mufti of Jerusalem for convincing Hitler to exterminate Jews.
Alan Elsner of J Street also softly rebuked the PM in a statement yesterday that concluded, “The two sides are drowning in mutual hatred,” so the U.S. needs to play a role.
Here’s a Facebook report on Netanyahu’s travels to Berlin, from Yossi Bartal, citing the ways his Holocaust claims violate German speech regulations:
The German police just arrested an Israeli Jew in the Palestinian demo against Netanyahu for supposedly inciting antisemitism because of a sign accusing the prime minister of Holocaust denial. Update: he was released and the accusation changed to ” insulting a foreign head of state”. Another Palestinian feminist activist was arrested as well, for holding a sign with the exact citation of Netanyahu on Hitler. She was accused of “racial incitement”.
This is laughable. CNN reports on Netanyahu’s so-called liberal opposition.
Netanyahu has also been blasted in Israel. Isaac Herzog, the head of that country’s opposition Zionist Union party, said Netanyahu, through his comments, “has forgotten that he is not only the Israeli Prime Minister but also the Prime Minister of the Jewish people.”…
“This is a dangerous distortion of history and I demand that Netanyahu fix it immediately, because it trivializes the Holocaust, trivializes the Nazis and the share of the terrible dictator Adolf Hitler’s terrible tragedy of our people during the Holocaust,” Herzog wrote on his Facebook page.
Finally, a great tweet from Ben White on the Prime Minister’s record.
Five Things That Netanyahu Actually Said https://t.co/kADVart9cr – my new post for @MiddleEastMnt pic.twitter.com/jLQospgsAa
— Ben White (@benabyad) October 22, 2015
Thanks, Phil, but I think you may be reading too much into Kerry’s statement. Your quoted text of Kerry condemning all incitement was immediately preceded by Netanyahu saying
In that context, Kerry was not referring specifically to the Mufti remarks but generally to all incitement. The State Department seems to be avoiding describing Netanyahu’s comment as incitement, despite considerable push-back from Matt Lee, Said Erekat, and other correspondents.
well, well, well, surprise surprise surprise NOT!
zionists and their supporters will ALWAYS defend the criminal zionist regime and the illegal unethical unjust colonization of Palestine……the only military-occupied country in the world in this 21st century.
we must always remember that a zionist is a zionist is a zionist. there is no “liberal” or “left” or “moderate”, just plain old criminal zionists. don’t be fooled by the use of any adjective to soften the zionist.
again, a zionist is a zionist is a zionist.
zionist = criminal = racist.
the only way to fight for justice, peace, equality, liberty, civil rights, freedom, and human rights in Palestine is through MASSIVE DAILY PEACEFUL DEMONSTRATIONS across Palestine so we end up with 1S1P1V – 1 state, 1 person, 1 vote.
I must have missed this ‘slamming’.
Another poster posted a transcript of a detailed back and forth between Matt Lee and a State Dept. spokesman. It would have been funny if it weren’t so serious. At NO point did the State Dept guy actually condemn Netanyahu’s remark. Nor did he even explicitly say it was flatout wrong – preferring to skate around the question by saying it was ‘not in line with scholarly evidence’. Matt Lee, as always, deftly pointed out the hypocrisy in the State Dept. routinely condeming Palestinians (in general) for ‘incitement’ while making a point of NOT condemning Netanyahu for – essentially – saying Palestinians were to blame for the holocaust, preferring to row back to the safety of ‘both sides must avoid inflammatory language’ nonsense.
So, I think your article is way too kind on official America.
Once again we are seeing and hearing Netanyahu causing trouble, lying, and being confronted by the international community, for being a liar. From within his own nation, to leaders outside, he has been criticized and shown how he is regarded, for this history of lies, and string of untruths, that only make him and the country he leads, look bad.
I know Kerry is trying to be “diplomatic” and maybe trying to broker peace once again, but enough is enough. This is a vicious cycle of violence, blaming victims of an occupation, and the false excuses of Israel “defending itself” while unarmed civilians are massacred. How long is the US and the rest of the world going on with this charade? The bottom line is Israel does not want peace with it’s neighbors, they keep blaming the Palestinians for every damn thing, including their suffering. It is as if the Palestinians WANT to live in open prisons, want their lands stolen, water controlled, and WANT to suffer for years. The entire world knows the zionist game, yet the only nation that could stop this madness is the US. Being compliant to Israel’s crimes, protecting it, arming them, and justifying breaking of international laws, has made us just as guilty of those crimes, just as hated, and shows we are indeed “controlled” by the zionists.
I hate this situation.
Palestinian leaders talk about “Jews and their filthy feet” defiling the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, and there’s a campaign of Palestinians stabbing innocent people in the street. Jews are not going to go into the street and stab Palestinians because Bibi Netanyahu made some crack about the Mufti and the Holocaust at the WZO.
I would strongly advise you, if you care about Palestinians, not to get into a debate about the Mufti; most Palestinians I know are smart enough not to do it. Regardless of whether or not Netanyahu was repeating a controversial claim by Barry Rubin et. al. (you people are no strangers to non-mainstream controversial conspiracy theories about Jewish history and about the history of the Holocaust), there is no debate that the Mufti met Hitler, encouraged Muslims to join to Ustase, and endorsed the extermination of Jews explicitly. He was a horrible human being and a war criminal.
There is no way Palestinians come out good when the Mufti is the subject of discussion, and if your point is that the Palestinian people had no role in the Holocaust, the best policy is to keep the Mufti out of the discussion completely.