The Spanish daily El País has published an op-ed accusing Israel of “being tempted to exterminate” the Palestinians and comparing its contemporary policy to that of Nazis.
In the op-ed, entitled “Anne Frank in the Occupied territories” the Spanish-Moroccan writer Najat El Hachmi stated that Anne Frank’s experiences during the Holocaust were echoed in recent escalations in Gaza.
“I can’t help thinking that today, in Gaza, in the West Bank, throughout Palestine and in Israel, there may be girls like Anne Frank [reflecting] on “the devastating consequences of absurd and savage barbarism, and the senselessness of wanting to exterminate those who are considered other,” she stated.
“From Amsterdam, Anne (Frank) said “all this happens to us simply because we are Jews”, in Palestine, there will also be teenagers writing in their diaries: “All this happens to us because we are Arabs.”
“And in the face of this I wonder if we have learned nothing from the Shoah, if the lessons about the dangers of antisemitism and how far hatred can take us do not serve to prevent the hatred against others by those who suffered the most.”
“I wonder whether it is possible that a people’s fear of being wiped off the map again can lead it to the temptation to want to exterminate another people that is perceived, all of it, not just its belligerent members, as the “enemy,” she concluded.
The Federation of Jewish communities of Spain (FCJE), the country’s EJC affiliate denounced the op-ed as an unacceptable trvialisation of the Holocaust, the mass extermination of six million Jewish men, women and children by the Nazis and their collaborators.
The FCJE requested the right to reply to El Hachmi’s Op-Ed.
Inaceptable la banalización del Holocausto que hoy leemos en las páginas de @el_pais pic.twitter.com/j074vkCMHZ
— FCJE (@fcjecom) May 28, 2021
