Netanyahu Holocaust remarks: Germany's Angela Merkel responds

"This is taught in German schools for good reason".

"We hope that all sides will contribute to de-escalating the situation", Merkel after her talks with the Israeli prime minister. A German government spokesman said the Holocaust was Germany's responsibility and there was no need for another view on it.

He said the Second World War-era Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Nazi sympathiser, Haj Amin al-Husseini, instigated Palestinian attacks on Jewish people with lies that they planned to destroy the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.

I don't know whether the encounter between the Mufti and Hitler occurred exactly as Netanyahu rendered it, nor do I know when Hitler, subjectively, decided that he wanted to kill Europe's Jews rather than expel them.

At the same time, it is absurd to ignore the role played by the Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a war criminal, in encouraging and goading Hitler, Ribbentrop, Himmler and others to exterminate European Jewry.

At the Wednesday evening press conference in Berlin, Netanyahu acknowledged that "no-one should contest" Hitler's role as the person bearing the main responsibility for the Holocaust.

In the speech Netanyahu claimed that Adolf Hitler had no intention of killing the Jews, but only wished to expel them.

Netanyahu made the comments just ahead of a trip to Berlin.

Hitler hosts Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini in 1941 in Germany.

"Hitler then asked: "What should I do with them?" and the mufti replied: Burn them".

A senior Palestinian official meanwhile said it showed Netanyahu hated Palestinians so much he was willing to absolve Hitler.

The German government rejected the Israeli leader's claim that a Palestinian religious leader gave Hitler the idea to extermine six million Jews. "Ah, Hitler didn't do that much, it's really the Arabs", said Avital.

The White House on Thursday rebuked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's controversial claim that a Palestinian cleric inspired Adolf Hitler to carry out the Holocaust.

In an interview with Sky News, Professor Dina Porat, chief historian for Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, said Mr Netanyahu should retract and clarify his statement.

Der Spiegel said in a report that several months before Hitler met with al-Husseini, the German army had already killed tens of thousands of Jews in Lithuania and Ukraine. [Husseini] said, 'Burn them.' And he was sought in, during the Nuremberg trials for prosecution.

Opposition politicians and historians inside Israel, as well as Palestinians, condemned Netanyahu's account as factually inaccurate.

Merkel, who spoke before Netanyahu, said that "Germany is clear on its responsibility for the Holocaust".

Moshe Zimmermann, a prominent Holocaust and anti-Semitism researcher at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said Netanyahu made a "far-reaching argument" that didn't hold up.