Journalist Hafsa Kara-Mustapha argues that the Israeli Prime Minister’s recent attempt to blame the Palestinians for the Holocaust is classic “Islamophobia Industry” technique – repeat a lie often enough and people will start to accept it as fact.

Benyamin Netanyahu’s latest gem was announcing that the Nazis’ Final Solution, which aimed to rid Europe of its Jewish population, was in fact the brainchild of a Palestinian cleric most people had never even heard of.

The reactions have been immediate and almost all (other than from within his cabinet) have condemned his revisionist version of WWII history. But his statement, which from the outset appeared absurd, has been exploited by the “Islamophobia industry” which is funded in the US by notable Zionist Americans who have demonised Muslims in order to gain sympathy for the Zionist cause.

The mechanisms of this sophisticated campaign include exaggerating any crimes or wrong-doings committed by Muslims and turning them into headline-grabbing news.

So for instance while a domestic fight between two Americans from a white Christian background would barely be reported in the local gazette, when it involves Muslims the information becomes breaking news and generates debates and documentaries to boot.

This becomes more glaring as the crime becomes more serious.

When a white teenager enters his school and guns down his classmates, he’s merely a “misunderstood youth” who snapped as a result of unexplainable trauma. The Muslim man involved in a street brawl however is inherently violent, a violence that stems from his equally violent religious upbringing.

This has been the mainstream media’s modus operendi for many decades. It started in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and has greatly developed since the 9/11 attacks on New York. The technique is almost always the same – exaggerate a Muslim crime while downplaying one of a Westerner (from Jewish or Christian backgrounds) so much so that the non-Muslim criminal becomes almost likable.

In the past week alone the cumulative effect of this media battering technique was brilliantly displayed in two horrific Islamophobic attacks on vulnerable Muslims on London buses. The aggressors came out with all the traditional racist tropes currently played out in the media; that Muslims are all ISIS terrorists, that they marry several partners, are all benefit scroungers etc…

The relentless media campaigns have been so recurrent it has become impossible to distinguish Islam from evil.

Joseph Goebbels

And so to Netanyahu’s comment about the Jerusalemite cleric who supposedly goaded Adolf Hitler into a policy of extermination of the Jews.

Goebbels, Germany’s infamous and brilliant propaganda minister, who laid out the blueprint for the art of PR, insisted that any information if repeated often enough would eventually be accepted as truth. Inspired by the works of Jewish advertiser Edward Barnays, Goebbels developed a strategy for state propaganda that continues to be applied by Western governments to this day.

No doubt some of if its most dedicated followers were Zionists who prepared the creation of Israel with the business acumen of a marketing project.

Israel had to have founding myths that would guarantee it international sympathy, support and – best of all – a free reign to push any policy to a sympathetic media that would not tolerate dissenting voices while still fiercely supporting the sacrosanct idea of “free speech.”

This Machiavellian approach to state propaganda on which Israel and the Zionist ideology were built have guaranteed Israel benefits form a unique position in the international media scene. While treated as a fully respected and respectable state, Israel is shielded from criticism because that would be “anti-Semitic.”

This would be the same media that insists that in free societies no topic is off bounds and religion and religious groups are fair game… just not Jewish ones.

Hajj Amine El Husseini

Netanyahu’s technique over the years has been to pin all of Israel’s crimes on the “evil Muslim.”

Never mind of what origin, for the Israeli premier if you’re Iran, Hamas, a Palestinian stone-thrower, or a relatively unknown cleric from Jerusalem, you are the same. Sweeping generalisations are only morally reprehensible if stated as “all Jews are…” however when it comes to Muslims and Islam, details should not hinder good PR.

With Netanyahu’s latest declaration about the origin of the Jewish Holocaust comes an insidious plan designed to shift the blame slowly but surely onto Arab/Muslim shoulders.

A few years ago I joked that by this rate of growing Islamophobia, Israel would one day declare that Hitler was in fact a closet Muslim. That hasn’t happened – at least not yet – but by associating WWII events to a Muslim mufti, the idea is already sown in many people’s minds about Islam and its nefarious role in world affairs.

WWII has always been portrayed as the biggest crime in humanity’s history.

Muslims who downplayed the severity of the Holocaust or denied its existence were cornered into treating this event – in which they had no role in – as if it was indeed the greatest crime. But this logic presented a flaw, as Muslims became more confident in challenging the dominant narrative it rapidly emerged that even if the Holocaust was indeed the greatest crime of all, it was one that didn’t involve Muslims or Islam.

And this is when Netanyahu’s pernicious declaration becomes central to the Israeli logic. By making such a bold statement about a historical figure few people knew about, he has triggered unparalleled interest in Hajj Amine El Husseini.

The faux outrage expressed by Israeli intellectuals is one of equal perversity. The numerous comments penned in the wake of this bizarre declaration have stated that indeed Husseini was a notable anti-Jew, that he supported Nazism and that his association with Hitler had proved hugely detrimental to the Palestinian cause.

As if all the suffering of the Palestinian people can be reduced to one cleric attempting to gain allies in stopping the takeover of his country.

Guilt by association is a common technique used by Israel and its sympathisers and the image of the Muslim cleric sat next to Hitler is now as iconic as that of the piled remains of Holocaust victims.

Never mind that Hitler also met the one time future king of this country who had expressed great admiration for the Nazi ideology, the idea that one Muslim could have nudged the greatest war criminal of the 20th century into carrying out his crimes has been successfully planted in people minds.

How this will play out in the coming weeks and months is anybody’s guess but it’s fair to remember that Netanyahu would not have made such an astonishing declaration had he not envisaged the consequences.

Downplaying Nazi atrocities

Beyond the political ramifications of Netanyahu’s worrying words come its historical consequences. Downplaying Hitler’s role in Nazi atrocities is a criminal offence in Germany and many respectable historians and public figures saw their careers brought to an end for merely challenging the dominant narrative on the war’s notable events.

If Germany’s role is to be downplayed then should historians once accused of criminal revisionism be compensated for the treatment they received? Should Germany return some of the funds it so generously offered Jewish victims of the Holocaust now that it’s clear the blame lies elsewhere?

How far are non-Israelis allowed to go in questioning what was once unquestionable and had to be accepted as “gospel truth?”

Netanyahu may have found a convoluted and deeply disingenuous way of associating Nazi crimes to Muslims but with that he’s also paved the way for scores of historians to finally discuss the Holocaust free from the shackles of “the anti-Semitism threat.”

Meanwhile, since Husseini’s meeting with Hitler has come to international prominence, I for one would be grateful if in his next address, Netanyahu could also discuss Ytzhak Shamir, Israel’s seventh prime minister’s notable ties to the Nazis in that very fateful year of 1941… after all perhaps a little Jewish genocide was just the nudge Zionist activists needed to get the unprecedented sympathy Israel has enjoyed ever since.

If one can associate a Muslim cleric from Palestine to European events surely a Belarusian activist would be an equally obvious connection.

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