Hezbollah Pressures School Into Dropping ‘Anne Frank’
Hezbollah pressured a private school in Beirut to drop from its curriculum a textbook containing excerpts of “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
The English-language school, which asked not to be identified, caved to pressure after Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station ran a segment railing against the school for including the posthumously published Holocaust memoir in its lessons, the French news agency AFP reported.
Hezbollah, which Israel and the United States consider a terrorist group, called the diary’s inclusion part of “an open arena for the Zionist invasion of education.”
Attorney Naim Kalaani, a member of a committee to ban Zionist products, told Al-Manar the use of the book in a school constituted a violation of Lebanon’s penal code and “tantamount to a step toward normalization” in ties with Israel. Hezbollah could not be reached by the station for comment.
The Paris-based organization Aladdin’s Project, which fights Holocaust denial and was first to translate Anne Frank’s diary into Arabic, issued a statement condemning Hezbollah’s “intimidation campaign.”
The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors denounced what it called a disgraceful act as a “twin blow against decency. It is a blatant expression of Holocaust denial, and an assault on one of the great works of modern literature and civilization.”
This marks the second time in a month Hezbollah has pressured a school into censoring information it dislikes. In October, International College, one of Lebanon’s most renowned private schools, agreed to put opaque stickers over pages of a textbook that named Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad as terrorist organizations.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
