Only Making Things Worse
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Only Making Things Worse

Gilbert N. Kahn is a professor of Political Science at Kean University.

It seems like Bibi has a psychological need to be fighting with someone or arguing about some form of persecution of Jews either contemporary or historical otherwise he feels he is not doing his job. As he presumes to be the world-wide leader of the Jewish people—a title he has given himself—Netanyahu leaves no rock unturned and no moment unfilled when he can issue a blast against Jewish haters. Jew haters need to be called-out and when Jews or Israel are endangered the world needs to be alerted, but every Arab is not Jew hater and historical revisionism is as unacceptable by Israel as much as by anyone else.

Enter Bibi’s remarks at the 37th World Zionist Congress meeting on Tuesday in Jerusalem. In his remarks as released by the Foreign Ministry Netanyahu stated that during World War II the Nazi sympathizer, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, put the idea of physically destroying the Jews into Hitler’s mind when they met in Berlin in 1941. The substance of this suggestion is absurd and inaccurate as the killing of Jews was already in place before the January 1942 Wannsee Conference adopted the more systematic “Final Solution” method as well as before he met the Grand Mufti; beginning as early as 1938. In addition, Hitler did not need any suggestions from al-Husseini as to what he should do with European Jews.  

Aside from the ridiculous historical inaccuracies in this allegation, it is incomprehensible as to why Netanyahu would choose to make this type of statement to the assemblage of world Zionists, just as he prepares to fly to Germany to meet John Kerry to discuss reducing the internal violence which began after a controversy over the status quo of access to the Temple Mount. Only Bibi’s constant need to secure his domestic right flank drives him to make these types of ridiculous rash allegations and stir up his political troops. After this foolishness, he went to Berlin with fallacies of his own doing, all with the hope of gaining U.S. support opposing the Palestinians’ false claims about Jerusalem.

In the face of this blunder, Netanyahu now is facing a genuine, factual mis-statement created yesterday by the Executive Board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It passed a resolution declaring that the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem to be Muslim sites. Rather than needing to address this error alone, here too Netanyahu finds himself forced to respond in the context of his own factual errors.

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