Palestinian leader Haj Amin al-Husseini inspired the Holocaust.

This false claim was popularized by Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015, when he alleged that Hitler only wanted to expel Europe's Jews and that Haj Amin al-Husseini persuaded him to exterminate them after the two met in 1941. In reality, by then, the genocide of European Jewry was already well underway and the decision to implement the "Final Solution" had already been set in motion. Israel's official Holocaust Center, Holocaust historians, Israeli leaders, and the German government rejected the claim, reaffirming that responsibility for the Holocaust rests solely with Nazi Germany.

Husseini's wartime alliance with Nazi Germany cannot be understood outside the colonial context of the time. As a Palestinian nationalist leader, he sought Palestinian and broader Arab independence from Zionist, British, and French colonial rule. After being pursued, arrested, and exiled by the British and French, he sought Axis support as a geopolitical alliance for Arab independence against the colonial powers dominating the region. His alliance was driven by anti-colonial political objectives in pursuit of Arab independence, not ideological commitment to Nazism.

The focus on Husseini also reflects a double standard. Zionist organizations likewise sought alliances with fascist regimes when it served their political aims. The founder of Lehi (the Stern Gang) proposed fighting alongside Nazi Germany in exchange for support for a Jewish state, while Revisionist Zionists operated a naval academy in Fascist Italy under the patronage of Mussolini's regime to train Zionist militias. Yet, it is Husseini's wartime alliance that is routinely invoked to delegitimize an entire anti-colonial national movement.

Netanyahu's revival of this myth in 2015 sought to portray the Palestinian struggle as inherently genocidal and antisemitic rather than anti-colonial. He made the claim while accusing Palestinians of inciting violence over Jerusalem's holy sites. Palestinians, whether Muslim, Christian, or secular, resist Zionism because it is a settler-colonial project, not because its proponents are Jewish. Had the colonizers belonged to any other religion or ethnicity, Palestinians would still have resisted dispossession and fought for their freedom.

Even if Haj Amin al-Husseini had never existed, the Holocaust would still have happened. The Holocaust was a European crime rooted in centuries of European antisemitism, racial ideology, and fascism. Attempting to shift responsibility onto a Palestinian leader distorts history while diminishing the responsibility of the actual perpetrators.