Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been slammed by Holocaust experts for suggesting that a historic Palestinian leader convinced the Nazis to exterminate European Jews.

Netanyahu’s comments have been described as “historically inaccurate.” Critics saying his statement amounts to incitement against modern-day Palestinians amid a wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence and tension.

“This 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’.”

Netanyahu was speaking to a group of Jewish leaders on Tuesday (Oct