Netanyahu and the truth

"I can't stand him. He's a liar," then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy told U.S. President Barack Obama four years ago, in a conversation about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Obama replied: "You're fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day." It was a private conversation, but we know about it because it was accidentally broadcast to journalists.

What drove Sarkozy and Obama to talk about Netanyahu like that was the sheer brazen effrontery of his lies - and he was at it again last week. In public, this time.

Speaking to the 37th World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem, Netanyahu declared that Hitler decided to exterminate the Jews on the advice of a Palestinian, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem. Al-Husseini met Hitler in Berlin in November 1941, he said (although there is no record of the meeting), and that was why the Holocaust happened. 

"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 [to Palestine].'" According to Netanyahu, Hitler then asked: "What should I do with them?" and the mufti replied: "Burn them."

So, you see, it was the Palestinians, driven by a vicious and unreasoning hatred of the Jews, who really thought up the Holocaust, and Adolf Hitler was merely a tool in their hands. Historians instantly denounced this travesty of the historical record, and the greatest outrage was expressed by Jews who felt that Netanyahu had given a great gift to the Holocaust deniers.

Experienced journalists know that the most useful question to ask yourself when confronted with an implausible story is not: "Is this bastard lying to me?" It is: "WHY is this bastard...