Netanyahu fabricates an impossible fiction

What the Arabic papers say about Israel’s prime minister

Demonstrating a cheap imagination overflowing with hostility towards Palestinians, Benjamin Netanyahu had decided to change historical fact, said Diana Moqalled. Miriam May - Pool / Getty Images

It's difficult to imagine that Adolf Hitler would have welcomed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent statements about the Holocaust, noted the Lebanese writer Diana Moqalled in the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al Awsat.

Demonstrating a “cheap imagination overflowing with hostility towards Palestinians”, Mr Netanyahu had decided to change historical fact, she argued. The Israeli prime minister has suggested that Adolf Hitler only wanted to expel Europe’s Jews during the Second World War but it was the Mufti of Jerusalem who persuaded him to begin the Holocaust.

The writer noted that Mr Netanyahu’s claims had given rise to a different type of confrontation, and that the derision and ridicule they elicited “united fronts in some ways”.

The bulk of ridicule over the Israeli prime minister’s statements came from Israelis themselves. Even historical allies of Israel couldn’t assimilate Mr Netanyahu’s comments despite their own hostility towards Palestinians, Moqalled wrote.

The German government denied the allegations, saying that responsibility for the Holocaust lay solely with the Germans of the time.

“We know the responsibility for this crime against humanity is German and very much our own,” a spokesman for chancellor Angela Merkel said.

A Twitter hashtag “Mufti made me do it” soon caught on, launching a widespread wave of derision over the issue.

“Ridiculing Netanyahu and exposing him on social media is necessary,” the writer noted, even though it “might not change anything on the ground or in the favour of Palestinians”.

The writer said that this was not the first time an Israeli official had used the Holocaust as a political tool to undermine the credibility and rights of Palestinians, but the scorn was necessary to invalidate Mr Netanyahu’s “condescending rationale”.

Moqalled said that one response from the Palestinian side had been in the form of exaggerated praise for the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

However, she pointed out that the mufti was an extremist figure who was on the Nazi payroll during the Second World War, and that his actions had reflected negatively on Palestinians at the time.

She also said that there had been no shortage of “trials” on social media in recent days.

There was an increasing tendency within the Israeli far right to demonise Palestinians even at the expense of their main cause.

On the other hand, there had been a renewal of an Arab and Palestinian tendency to either undermine or glorify the Holocaust.

“Netanyahu attempted to harm Palestinians by fabricating allegations against the mufti. But for Palestinians to defend the mufti’s alleged patriotism is in itself also harmful to the Palestinian cause,” Moqalled concluded.

For his part, Dr Ahmed Yussuf Ahmed, a contributing columnist with The National's Arabic sister paper, Al Ittihad, noted that Mr Netanyahu's remarks, as ridiculous and politically and ethically incriminating as they were, were no longer the issue.

The real issue was that a national leader could be so intellectually and ethically wrong and still enjoy such a level of power.

Ahmed said this was evidence that proved the racist nature of Israel, “which has wreaked havoc on Palestinians ever since it was established”.

He said Mr Netanyahu had exposed himself as a racist and ignorant leader when he “fabricated an impossible lie”.

* Racha Makarem