Godwin’s Law Has Taken a Beating Lately

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Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday:

Referring to the current cycle of violence, Netanyahu said Jews in Israel have faced attacks in the past — in 1920, 1921, 1929 — instigated by the “Mufti of Jerusalem,” Haj Amin al-Husseini, who allied himself with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis during World War II.

Then Netanyahu delivered this jaw-dropping assertion:

“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 asked. He said, ‘Burn them.’

Ben Carson thinks the Holocaust was partly the fault of the Jews for meekly giving up their guns and not fighting back hard enough. Netanyahu thinks it’s partly the fault of the Palestinians because Hitler met with one of them a couple of years after he started exterminating Jews.

Can we all just go back to obeying Godwin’s Law and blaming Hitler for everything? Thanks.

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Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do. That’s why we need you right now. Please chip in to help close the gap.

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