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Bibi's Holocaust comments muddle congressional case against Palestinian 'incitement'

Prime Minister Netanyahu accidentally undermines US lawmakers' singular focus on Abbas.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures as he speaks during a news conference in Jerusalem October 8, 2015. Four people, including an Israeli soldier, were stabbed and wounded near a military headquarters in Tel Aviv on Thursday, police and ambulance sources said, as a rash of such Palestinian attacks spread to Israel's commercial capital. The assailant was shot and killed by another soldier as he fled, a police spokeswoman said. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun - RTS3M2L

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's assertion that a Palestinian mufti was responsible for the Holocaust risks undermining congressional efforts to lay the blame for the current violence squarely at the feet of the Palestinians.

The Israeli leader's comment Oct. 20 before the World Zionist Congress that Adolf Hitler only wanted to expel the Jews of Europe before Haj Amin al-Husseini urged him to "burn them" provoked outrage across the political spectrum in Israel. It also complicates efforts by Israel's allies in the United States to place the blame for incitement solely on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. 

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