Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been criticised for “dangerous” historical revisionism for his comments blaming the Holocaust on a Palestinian leader.

In a speech at the 37th Zionist Congress, Netanyahu accused the Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, of “fomenting the final solution”.

He said:

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.”

However, Professor Dina Porat, chief historian of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, immediately criticised Netanyahu’s comments, saying that they were “factually incorrect”.

She told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper:

“It’s not true. Their meeting occurred after a series of events that point to this.”

Opposition leader Isaac Herzog called Netanyahu’s remarks “dangerous historical distortion”.

Palestine Liberation Organisation Secretary General, Saeb Erekat, said

“It is a sad day in history when the leader of the Israeli government hates his neighbour so much that he is willing to absolve the most notorious war criminal in history, Adolf Hitler, of the murder of six million Jews.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert responded:

“All Germans know the history of the murderous race mania of the Nazis that led to the break with civilization that was the Holocaust.

“This is taught in German schools for good reason, it must never be forgotten. And I see no reason to change our view of history in any way. We know that responsibility for this crime against humanity is German and very much our own.”

The comments come amid an escalation in violence in Jerusalem between Arabs and Israelis, where 47 Palestinians and nine Israelis have been killed.