David Grossman rips into Netanyahu for Hitler ‘acquittal’

The award-winning Israeli novelist David Grossman has castigated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for recent statements about Hitler, calling his comments “a near monstrous failure” in an op-ed in the British daily The Guardian.

Linking statements Netanyahu made ostensibly absolving Hitler for the idea of the Final Solution to another snafu last week when he was photographed holding covered binoculars to his face, Grossman said the prime minister was leading Israel with his “eyes wide shut.”

“At once it became tangible: anyone, in Israel or abroad, could see the manner in which Netanyahu gazes, when all is said and done – only internally, only within himself,” he wrote.

During an address last Tuesday, Netanyahu posited that Hitler did not initially intend to annihilate the Jews but rather sought to expel them from Europe. According to the prime minister’s version of the events, Hitler changed his mind after meeting with Jerusalem’s then-grand mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, a Palestinian nationalist widely acknowledged as a fervent Jew-hater.

“Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time [of the meeting between the mufti and the Nazi leader]. He wanted to expel the Jews,” Netanyahu said. “And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here [to mandatory Palestine],’” continued the prime minister.

Grossman said Netanyahu has an approach to history that “enables him to erase the facts in order to change – with one quick cartwheel of the consciousness – the condition of occupation and oppression to one of persecution and victimhood.”

The author, known for political activism and support for Palestinian statehood, also also slammed Netanyahu for his regular use of the Holocaust as an analogy for current events in Israel and the region.

“For many years now, ever since he embarked on his journey to the Prime Minister’s Office, he has masterfully mixed and stirred the true dangers facing Israel with the echoes of Holocaust trauma,” he said. “Skillfully, with sharp flashes of rhetoric and overwhelming powers of persuasion, he has learned how to ensnare the majority of the Israeli population within a labyrinth constructed of echoes and the true facts of reality.”

Ultimately, said Grossman, this approach will lead to an Israel ruled by the threat of perpetual dangers, real or imagined, instead of having the courage to face its challenges.

“He who sees only these threats will in the end fall victim to them,” Grossman warned.

Grossman, who lost his son Uri in combat during the 2006 Second Lebanon War, said his criticism did not make light of the dangers facing Israel. According to him, “the knives of the intensifying third intifada and the hatred for Israel in the Arab lands, alongside the brittle fragility of the Middle East… must be faced with eyes wide open.”