Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu triggered a firestorm of controversy on Tuesday when he told the World Zionist Congress that Hitler’s “final solution” was actually someone else’s idea—that of the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini.

Here’s the context of those controversial remarks:

[T]his attack and other attacks on the Jewish community in 1920, 1921, 1929, were instigated by a call of the Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was later sought for war crimes in the Nuremberg trials because he had a central role in fomenting the final solution.He flew to Berlin. 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.” And he was sought in, during the Nuremberg trials for prosecution. He escaped it and later died of cancer after the war. … But this is what Haj Amin al-Husseini said. He said, “The Jews seek to destroy the Temple Mount.” My grandfather in 1920 seeks to destroy … al-Aqsa Mosque.So this lie is about a hundred years old.

Netanyahu was primarily talking about the lies which the Palestinians have been spreading—that the Jews are trying to destroy al-Aqsa. But what got all the attention was his comment about Hitler wanting to expel the Jews and how it was the mufti who encouraged Hitler to burn them!

The outrage triggered by Netanyahu’s remarks was not just limited to Palestinian leaders—many Western officials and Israelis were infuriated by what the prime minister said. Notice the outrage from some of Israel’s notables:

So what is it about the mufti?

The Nazis started working with the Jerusalem mufti in the 1930s, when he was fomenting Arab resentment toward the British. He was then forced to flee to Iraq. “Once there,” we wrote in the Trumpet, “he attempted to arrange an Iraqi coup against the British government in 1941. The mufti then fled through Iran and found his way to Berlin, where he received a hero’s welcome as the ‘führer of the Arab world.’ He met with Hitler on a number of occasions and worked to advance the Nazi goal of exterminating the Jews, personally recruiting Bosnian Muslims for the Nazi cause” (“The Mufti and the Führer,” Trumpet, May 2007).

The mufti met with Hitler in November 1941. By that point, the killing of Jews had already begun on the eastern front. But the “final solution” wasn’t made official until two months after the mufti’s visit with Hitler. So whether or not the conversation between Hitler and the grand mufti happened exactly the way Netanyahu says, one thing we know for certain is that the mufti was definitely an enthusiastic supporter of the finalsolution!

And the mufti was responsible for instigating genocide against the Jews in the 1920s and 1930s—and again in Iraq in 1941.

Netanyahu may have overstated his case about who came up with the idea—but the undeniable fact is that both Hitler and the grand mufti embraced the final solution and worked to exterminate Jews in Europe and the Middle East.

Many people said that Netanyahu’s remarks somehow let Hitler off the hook for the Holocaust. Even Angela Merkel’s government in Germany responded to Netanyahu’s speech by saying the “responsibility for this crime against humanity is German and very much our own.”

But was Netanyahu really trying to absolve Germany’s involvement in the Holocaust? Or was he trying to show that Germany had enthusiastic support and help coming from the godfather of the Palestinian movement?

Here’s how Netanyahu responded to the storm of criticism on Wednesday:

I had absolutely no intention of absolving Hitler of his diabolical responsibility for the extermination of Europe’s Jews. Hitler was responsible for the Final Solution to murder 6 million. It was his decision. 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.

What should be the big story is that the Palestinian leader was a war criminal who exterminated Jews and offered Adolf Hitler enthusiastic support!

Netanyahu continued:

There are many testimonies to this, including the testimony of Eichmann’s deputy at Nuremberg … after the Second World War. He said: ‘The mufti played a role in the decision of the German government to exterminate the European Jews, the importance of which must not be disregarded. He has repeatedly suggested to the various authorities with whom he has been in contact, above all before Hitler, Ribbentrop and Himmler, the extermination of European Jewry. He considered this as a comfortable solution for the Palestine problem.’Eichmann’s deputy added: ‘The mufti was one of the initiators of the diabolical extermination of European Jewry and was a partner and adviser to Eichman and Hitler in the carrying-out of this plan.’This attempt by certain researchers and certain people to give an apologetic to the central and important role Hajj Amin al-Husseini had is obvious. …My goal was not to absolve Hitler from the responsibility that he bears, but rather to show that the father of the Palestinian nation at that time, without a state and without what they call ‘the occupation,’ without Palestinian territories and without settlements, already aspired to destroy the Jews through systematic incitement.

Netanyahu’s point was that Palestinians were aiming to kill Jews even before there was a Jewish state! They were spreading the lie that Jews were trying to destroy al-Aqsa even before there was a Jewish state!

But that’s not what’s making big news. The big story is whether or not Benjamin Netanyahu overstated the grand mufti’s involvement in the Holocaust.

“Unfortunately, Hajj Amin al-Husseini is still a revered figure in Palestinian society,” Netanyahu said. “He appears in textbooks and is elevated as the father of the nation, and the incitement that began with him, incitement to kill Jews, continues. It’s not the same format, but in another format, and it’s the root of the problem. In order to stop the murder, we must stop the incitement.”

Now is that the truth—or is it a lie?

On Jan. 4, 2013, Mahmoud Abbas said this about the godfather of the Palestine Liberation Organization (plo), the mufti of Jerusalem. “We must remember the pioneers, the grand mufti of Palestine, Hajj Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, as well as Ahmad al-Shukeiri, the founder of the plo.” Abbas praised the mufti as one of the pioneers of the Palestinian movement!

On Oct. 6, 2013, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech at Bar Ilan University in response to Abbas’s high praise for the grand mufti. In it, he referred to the affidavit of one of Adolf Eichmann’s subordinates, Dieter Wisliceny, who appeared as a witness at the Nuremberg trials. Wisliceny testified:

The mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry for the Germans and had been the permanent collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of the plan. … According to my opinion, the grand mufti, who had been in Berlin since 1941, played a role in the decision of the German government to exterminate the European Jews, the importance of which must not be disregarded. He had repeatedly suggested to the various authorities with who had been in contact, above all before Hitler, Ribbentrop and Himmler, the extermination of European Jewry. He considered this as a comfortable solution of the Palestinian problem. In his messages broadcast from Berlin, he surpassed us in anti-Jewish attacks. He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures.

In a Powerline piece titled “Netanyahu vs. the Mufti: Why the Controversy?”, acclaimed lawyer John Hinderaker wrote, “While Netanyahu overstated the case, the universal condemnation of his remarks not only reflects hostility toward the prime minister, but also, I suspect, a desire to distract attention from an important piece of history of which most people are unaware.