Israel's President Benjamin Netanyahu sparked controversy yesterday by a speech in which he blamed the Holocaust on a Palestinian. Speaking at a World Zionist Congress meeting in Jerusalem, he recounted a conversation between the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Adolph Hitler. Netanyahu said: "Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews at the time – he wanted to expel the Jews.

"And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said: 'If you expel them, they'll all come here.'

"'So what should I do with them?' he [Hitler] asked. He [Husseini] said: 'Burn them.'"

Netanyahu was accused of stoking religious tensions and even received a coded rebuke from Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel.

It's quite a shocking conversation, even so.

It would be shocking if it ever actually happened. Netanyahu invented it.

So it wasn't this Mufti who gave Hitler the idea for the Holocaust?

No. Prof Dina Porat, who as the chief historian of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial ought to know, said: "You cannot say that it was the mufti who gave Hitler the idea to kill or burn Jews. It's not true. Their meeting occurred after a series of events that point to this."

Sounds like a major fail for Netanyahu.

Yes, but the trouble is that this sort of thing plays very well with the Israeli Right, who are opposed to the sort of two-state solution championed by international bodies. Speaking against the background of the upsurge in violence in recent weeks, it's pretty incendiary.

Who is this Haj Amin al-Husseini anyway?

He was from a prominent family and appointed as mufti by Sir Herbert Samuel in 1921. Samuel – himself a Jew – was Britain's first High Commissioner of Palestine during the Mandate period, when Britain administered the territory after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire following WWI. Husseini was not very well qualified for the job but Samuel thought he would use his influence to maintain order. He was responsible for restoring the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, which he had plated in gold. He was a violent anti-Semite who saw increasing Jewish immigration as a threat.

Ah, so he wasn't a good man?

Absolutely not. He met Hitler in November 1941 and was photographed with him, and an official account of their meeting is available. He asked Hitler to declare his support for a post-war Arab state, which Hitler declined to do. However, Hitler promised "the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power". Husseini also helped recruit 20,000 Muslim volunteers for the SS, who served in Croatia and Hungary and killed Jews there. Yugoslavia attempted to have him indicted for war crimes in 1945 but he escaped from French custody in 1946 and never faced justice. According to one of Adolf Eichmann's aides, Dieter Wisliceny, Eichmann gave him a conducted tour of Auschwitz. This may or may not be true.

But he wasn't responsible for the Holocaust?

Categorically not. As Angela Merkel said: "We are very clear in our minds about the Nazis' responsibility for the break with civilisation that was the Shoah." The idea that he suggested the Holocaust to Hitler is poisonous nonsense.

So where did Netanyahu get this from?

The idea that Husseini was in some way the architect of the Holocaust is found on the fringes of Holocaust studies and beloved by conspiracy theorists. Barry Rubin and Wolfgang Schwanitz in Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East say that without him the Holocaust would not have taken place.

Am I seeing a bit of a pattern here?

The Holocaust was one of the most dreadful crimes of the 20th century. Linking its perpetrators with modern struggles against Islamist criminals is smart propaganda.

But not true?

No, not true. But it's not all bad news: Netanyahu has been widely ridiculed for his remarks. Posts on social media include suggestions that Husseini was to blame for the break-up of the Beatles and for Eve eating the apple in the Garden of Eden.

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