Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated Friday his position regarding the role of the Mufti of Jerusalem in the Holocaust , saying that it was the Nazis, and not Haj Amin al-Husseini, who had decided to exterminate European Jewry, and said he never attempted to "absolve [Adolf] Hitler of his responsibility for the Holocaust."
Netanyahu's initial remarks were widely dismissed by historians and Holocaust scholars as a gross overstatement of the Muslim leader's role in the Holocaust, with Palestinian leaders and some analysts saying it was a political attempt to link the Palestinians with the murder of six million European Jews .
In his post, Netanyahu defended his remarks as an attempt to "illustrate the murderous approach of the Mufti to the Jews in his lengthy contacts with the Nazi leadership," an approach Netanyahu claimed still lives on today .