Palestinian writer: "We have thousands of Anne Frank houses"

From Aseel Ghaben in the Jordan Times:

Anne Frank House from a Palestinian perspective

I took a trip to the Netherlands. A trip to Amsterdam, where culture and history are rich, and people are nice and open cannot be complete without a visit to Anne Frank House, the hiding place of the German Jewish girl who was one of the million victims of Nazi persecution.

...At the end of the tour, there was a short documentary with famous people commenting on their visit to the Anne Frank House, including Shimon Peres, the former Israeli president. Peres said: “Her innocent, truthful voice will sing all over the world by many generations to come, so to understand the difference between being human and being satanic.”

When I heard his speech, all the grief in my heart turned to rage. I wanted to stand up and shout so all the tourists there could also hear my voice. I imagined myself making this speech: “This man is such a hypocrite. His people were once subjected to racism, but his country is still doing the same thing to us. We, Palestinians, are the victims of a racist Zionist ideology. We have thousands of Anne Frank houses. Any tourist is welcome to visit.

“Our equivalent for this house are refugee camps located in Palestine and also in many neighbouring countries. The main difference is that visiting them could endanger one’s safety."

People were still watching the documentary while I was sitting with tears in my eyes. They have to know that Palestinian refugees are still waiting. They have been waiting for 67 years. They were not sent to concentration camps to be burned, but instead to refugee camps were [sic] death is very slow and the right to return is a dream. They often live in the worst conditions, have no citizenship, no fundamental rights and few life essentials.

...To paraphrase Peres’ quote, I could say that our innocent, truthful voices will keep resisting until the world can understand the difference between being human and being a Zionist.

The creation of Israel is “Palestine Holocaust Day” and the Palestinian people were subjected to the worst holocaust in history,” said Yasser Arafat.

This sensitive student at the University of Jordan has more in common with the Nazis than she realizes.

To write an essay that claims that there are thousands of Palestinians who are in more dire circumstances than Anne Frank is to be an antisemite.

And calling Zionist Jews inhuman is a nice touch. Maybe she should have called them Untermenschen.

The Jordan Times - which is apparently still government-owned - felt that this bigot's voice needs to be heard.

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