Sunday marks 80 years since Anne Frank's family was arrested by the Nazis on August 4, 1944.
The statue commemorating Anne Frank, one of the most famous victims of the Holocaust, was defaced with pro-Palestinian graffiti for the second time on Sunday.
The statue is located in Merwedeplein, near the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
According to images published on X, the base of the statue was spray-painted with the slogan "Free Gaza" while the girl's hands were painted with the same red color, AFP reported.
Perhaps the GRU (Russian military intelligence) paid some petty criminals to do it, as they did with pro-Palestine graffiti on a Jewish cemetery in France a few months ago
Exactly. Things like this happened many times in the past. And it could be that this was done by Zionists or Nazis to pin on pro-Palestinian activitists. Not saying that this is the case, but it is a possibility.
Do you apply this same standard to the January 6th morons, or do you conveniently use their actions to paint everyone on the right as fascists and lunatics?
I like how people are assuming if Anne Frank were alive she would be doing anything other than shouting to the world about ending the genocide in Gaza because genocides are the most terrible crime humanity can enact upon itself.
A statue is just some rock you paid somebody to carve.
Yes. That is Israel’s only PR card only and they’ve been playing it over and over.
As an actual pro-Palestine act of protest, this is pure idiocy. It is plainly antisemitic and there is no grounds to hold Anne Frank accountable for the state of Israel. If a pro-Palestine protestor did this then they are an absolute moron and a bigot.
However. As a pro-Israel false flag, this is brilliant. It draws a tight connection between supporting Palestine and being anti-Semitic. It makes protestors look exactly like the bigots Israel wants them all to be.
So given that someone just ran up and did this under cover of night, we’re left with a decision: was it done by someone incredibly stupid or very smart? There are plenty of both in the world.
People are scoffing at this, but in the UK you've got full blown fascist riots over the purely fictitious claim that a knife attack was perpetrated by a Muslim immigrant. The British far-right are burning mosques and storefronts in response to a social media slander.
This is how people confuse Jews with Zionists and Israelis. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they are only one of the options, but they are not synonyms.
How wildly misguided and disrespectful. That is assuming this was even done in earnest. Accusations of anti semitism are levied at anti-zionist action all the time and it's hard to dismiss those accusations when legitimate anti-semitism frequently tries to associate itself with anti-zionism.
I'm not even saying this couldn't have been done by a legitimate anti-zionist who is also antisemitic. It just continually weakens the cause of anti colonialism when other forms of bigotry crop up around us. Anti semitism in all it's forms is completely abhorrent and unacceptable. Advocating for the liberation of Palestinians should never invoke anti-Semitic ideology.
Edit: if you're curious how antisemitism could come to exist in leftist movements, read the comments below. Giving no thought to the impact our actions have is unacceptable. Pissing people off is not a worthy trade for making Jewish leftists feel unsafe in our movements.
It's to make a statement and draw attention, protest is supposed to make you upset. That's just how life works.
Ed:
About the letters, Otto wrote: ‘I often end my letters by writing: “I hope that Anne's book will impact the rest of your life so that insofar as it is possible in your own circumstances, you will work for unity and peace.”’
Otto died on 19 August 1980. Shortly before his death, he said in an interview: ‘I am almost ninety now and my strength is slowly fading. But the mission that Anne passed on, keeps giving me new strength - to fight for ,reconciliation and for human rights across the world.’
Ie. Make the disrespect of Mrs Frank and her family visible by defacing a statue of her the same way Israel defaces Jewish history and legacy.
I get that angle, I do. I just question whether the statement works or not. Do you think the majority of people will interpret these actions that way? Do you think this will paint a good picture of anti-zionist action to the wider international public? Drop the "pro-palestinian" part and the headline reads like probably neo-nazi action. And I do firmly believe that's how it will be interpreted. I'm a revolutionary leftist like I'm all for taking action this action just serves not to advance the cause but actually to degrade it. This action legitimizes accusations of anti semitism levied at anti zionists. That is exactly how it will be interpreted that is the exact story they will tell.
They'll always try and accuse us of being antisemitic, see the college protests for example. But that was contentious like the public was not united in opposition to that because protesting on campus is not on its face value antisemitic. But defacing a statue of a girl who was murdered in a genocide of jewish people does NOT come across as anti-zionist action. We do NOT have to stir up outrage over disrespecting holocaust victims to advocate for Palestinian liberation.
Not to mention can we not have some respect for Jewish people within our movement? How do you think this makes them feel? An innocent girl who died due to virulent antisemitic hatred being brought into a conflict over another genocide. Jewish people tell us they don't always feel safe in leftist circles. This is also not helping that in any way
I get where you're coming from but all this is going to do is fuel the fire under people who think support for Palestine is hate for the Jewish community as a whole.
Hate begets hate, not calm and rational responses.
If this changes your opinion on Gaza-Israel; you are a fucking moron.
If Hamas' fighters being hateful and commiting war crimes changes your opinion on the conflict; you are a fucking moron.
If you think no hamas fighter is hateful and has committed atrocities; you are a naive moron.
If you are wondering why Israel is wrong and Palestinians in the right despite both sides' soldiers (and "soldiers") committing war crimes, it's because Israel created this situation by occupying Palestine and trying to ethnically cleanse it.
People in the West are way naive and sheltered from the realities of war, in part due to propaganda and how western war efforts have been portrayed as unrealistically "clean" and sanitized.
Good take. Except maybe missing the part where the west is complicit in the suffering of palestinians, and where the Arab nations starting a war vs. Israel taught Israel to be aggressive preemptively.
And this is not an excuse, just an (incomplete) analysis how this clusterfuck came about.
I'd argue that currently, as Israel has existed for long enough for generations to be born, we cannot solve the issue by just removing it from the map. This really is a homeland for these people, and historic arguments are not valid, or else we have to rebuild an entire world map.
But we can absolutely condemn both Israeli and Palestinian governments when they've gone too far.
October attacks carried out by Hamas were a mistake; but that doesn't excuse Israeli armed forces razing Gaza to the ground. War crimes, civilian deaths, mass destruction and leaving no ways to escape is not an appropriate response.
Also, apartheid and blatant disrespect for Palestinian sovereignty, people and territory, as well as trying to dehumanize people living there are big reasons why this conflict happens in the first place, and that's heavily on Israel.
Would Hamas do the same if they had the power to do so? Absolutely. They are not known for respecting international law and being good at peace regulations. But this is not just Hamas vs. Israeli armed forces. Thousands upon thousands of innocent people are murdered without mercy. And it's Israeli soldiers who perpetrate it.
Can't remove Israel from the map? Maybe, maybe not. The important thing is that Jewish people can exist in a one state Palestine, with equal rights and dignity, but Israel can't deprive the Palestinians from their rights any longer. The state of Israel has no right to exist, because its only justification has ever been the subjugation of other people living there. It needs to be a majority Jewish state per its theocratic charter, and they achieve this by removing non-Jewish people from their land, ie genocide
Which makes the idea of a Zionist state all the more justified. Happy, or more aptly less sad, the European Jews who spent the years between 1935 to 1945 in Palestine, and not the antisemitic shithole that was Europe (and by "Europe" I also mean United Kingdom and Russia/the USSR).
Haviv Rettig Gur put it very accurately and concisely, if brutally, in a lecture he gave recently:
For Jews In the 21st century, you either learned English or Hebrew or you were killed.
As a Brit myself (English, Catholic, English as far back as Ancestry can tell etc.) I'm really ashamed of this country since October 7th. It's as if we felt that we had been impervious to the very deep, ancient cancer of antisemitism due to WW2. And that seems to have left us even more defenceless than many other European states which have at least tried at points to contain this.
Whatever gave you that impression? I can't see nazis being on the side of Israel. There's probably complexity on views but defacing a concentration camp jew is missing the mark by a lot.
Actually plenty of Nazis are pro Israel, it might even be the default position. Israel can be both a place to send Jewish people to get them out of your country and an example to hold up of successful ethno nationalism. On top of that Nazis would revel in the deaths of Palestinians, the bigotry of Nazis extends further than antisemitism.
You kids all talk the same. I can picture exactly what you look like. Don't insist over and over that there's no anti Semitism mixed into this protest, and then get mad and call people ignorant when they point at it for you. Fix that shit, expel those fucks from your protests, instead of bitching to me online. Do something about it. And if you're not part of these protests and all you do for the cause is sit online and bitch, shut the fuck up. Cause you're not part of any of this.
My children under 12 have suffered anti Semitism recently for being proud to be half Jewish. And I'm out there with teachers and city councillors trying to make changes so these protest stay on point and don't veer off into bullshit.