Malala Yousafzai Talks About Palestinian Freedom While At The Anne Frank House

Malala Yousafzai. Image by Getty Images

By Jenny Singer December 11, 2017

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani women’s education activist and youngest person to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, visited the Anne Frank House on Sunday, December 10. Yousafzai, a student at Oxford University who has launched major education initiatives, was personally targeted and shot three times by a Taliban gunman on her school bus as a 15 year-old. On Sunday, which was U.N. Human Rights Day, Yousafzai visited the annex apartment in Amsterdam where Frank hid from the Nazis with her family and other Jews for over two years during World War Two, and where the teenager wrote her diary.

Standing in the annex holding a copy of the famed diary, which is one of the best-selling books of all time, Yousafzai tweeted an image of herself at the museum with this caption:

“The words Anne Frank wrote in this room still remind us to cherish and defend human rights. Today, I am thinking of Palestinian and Rohingya children — and all around the world still struggling to achieve Anne’s dream of freedom.”

The words Anne Frank wrote in this room still remind us to cherish and defend human rights.

Today, I am thinking of Palestinian and Rohingya children- and all around the world still struggling to achieve Anne’s dream of freedom.#HumanRightsDay pic.twitter.com/jmFcYTkZoR

— Malala (@Malala) December 10, 2017

Oy. Vey.

One tweet, so many questions.

Is Yousafzai casually conflating the genocide of the Jews and the genocide of the Rohingya with the situation of the Palestinian people? Or is she simply saying that Anne Frank’s desperate years trapped in an attic in some ways resemble the difficult circumstances of many Palestinian youths? (After a day trip to Hebron would you tell me that’s an unjust comparison?) Should we just let it be because Yousafzai is just a University student? Or take it seriously because she is a major and effective activist?

Although Yousafzai and Frank were born 70 years apart they were both targeted as teenagers because of their identities and robbed of their human rights. Both changed the way the world thought through work they did before they turned 20.

One can’t help wondering if, under different circumstances, they could have become friends.

Jenny Singer is a writer for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO