In a recent post, I cited Benjamin Netanyahu’s fantastic assertion that Iran seeks to take over the whole world.  I suppose that claim could be dismissed as a fanciful flight of rhetoric, even though it did occur in an apparently prepared speech.  I also mentioned Bibi’s serial predictions, beginning in 1992, that Iran was within a few years of producing an atomic bomb.  Now, Bibi has laid to rest any doubt that he is a serious paranoid fantasist.  In another speech, he has blamed the grand mufti of Jerusalem, the leader of Palestinian Arabs under the British mandate, for the Holocaust.  According to Bibi, it was the mufti who gave Hitler the idea of exterminating the Jews.  Hitler would have been content merely to expel them all (where?) if the mufti hadn’t proposed the final solution.  This story is as baseless as it is outlandish: the mufti was indeed a hate-monger and Nazi collaborator, but preparations  for the final solution were well underway before the Fuhrer first met the mufti in November 1941.  Hitler didn’t need his advice.

Israel may have real threats to deal with, but it should be clear by now that no one can ever take seriously anything Netanyahu says on that subject.