Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hitler initially wanted to expel, not exterminate the Jews. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

To the editor, The Guardian

Re: Anger at Netanyahu claim Palestinian grand mufti inspired Holocaust – Oct. 21

I believe you owe your readers an explanation for referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement about the Mufti as “incendiary,” while barely noticing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ truly incendiary statements praising the murderers of Jewish civilians, including children, and his use of hateful rhetoric, including calling for Jews “with their filthy feet” to be banned from entering the Temple Mount.

While Netanyahu’s statement may have been unnecessary and undiplomatic, it was not as absurd as the Guardian and other mainstream media make out. Editors are supposed to check their facts before rushing to publish.

There is no excuse for the Guardian to be ignorant of the Madagascar Plan, which confirms the PM’s assertion that Hitler initially wanted to expel, not exterminate, the Jews.

In 1938, the notorious Adolf Eichmann prepared a report advocating an evacuation plan for 4 million Jews to be shipped to Madagascar. In his paper, “Madagascar Plan,” Christopher Browning quotes Heinrich Himmler in May 1940 stating: “However cruel and tragic each individual case may be, this method is still the mildest and best, if one rejects the Bolshevik method of physical extermination of a people out of inner conviction as un-German and impossible.”

The plan was endorsed by the Third Reich in August 1940.

Damming evidence of the Mufti’s exhortations to exterminate the Jews was presented at the Nurenberg trials by none other than senior Nazi official Dieter Wisliczeny. On September 15, 1947, Drew Pearson, one of the best-known American columnists of his day, quoted Wisliczeny’s evidence in his column, “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” as follows:

In my opinion, the grand mufti, who has been in Berlin since 1941 played a role in the decision of the German government to exterminate the European Jews, the importance of which must not be disregarded. He had repeatedly suggested to the various authorities with whom he had been in contact, above all before Hitler, Ribbentrop and Himmler, the extermination of European Jewry. He considered this as a comfortable solution to the Palestinian problem. In is messages broadcast from Berlin, he surpassed us in anti-Jewish attacks. He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say that, accompanied by Eichmann, he has visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz.