If Anne Frank were alive today

Anne Frank would be 97 years old if she were alive in 2026. We know that her life was cut short by the German Gestapo. Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in the Netherlands bears the mark of her last days, where she bade adieu to this world for good. She became a Holocaust celebrity throughout the world. She hid in the secret annex in her father’s business premises in Amsterdam. Children around the world grew up reading the diary she kept as her only companion to fight suffocation in her hiding place due to Nazi Germany’s Jewish pogrom.

If she were alive today, what would she do? First, she would ask Hitler for which crime the Jews were killed? Then she would ask the Zionists why children are being killed in Palestine. She would condemn the killing of innocent children, as Israel is committing both genocide and pedicide. Instead of directing their anger towards the Nazi party, the Zionists have become one with the Neo-Nazis. They are keeping Nazism alive. The Brandenburg Gate in Germany, which carried Nazi flags during the Second World War, now flaunts the flag of Israel. The Holocaust has taught the Zionists to use hostility to survive, and they have found easy prey in Palestine.

Just three years after Anne Frank’s death, in 1948, Israel was unlawfully born, bringing Nakba or catastrophe to the Palestinians. If Anne Frank were alive, she would be ashamed of Israel today. She would denounce the atrocity and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. She would disown Israel, which was founded on mass killing and the eviction of Palestinians. She would condemn Israel for using white phosphorus in Lebanon. She would disparage the use of nauseating and foul-smelling skunk water to make the lives of Palestinians living hell by Israeli drones. She would stand against the victims of Israeli terrorism who are forced to live inside rickety buildings about to collapse anytime due to the airstrike.

She would cry for Ismail Abu Asba, who was beaten by Israeli settlers for harvesting olives from his own land, and talk with him and tell him to fight against colonisers.

She would be horrified by the sight of dead bodies being recovered from the rubble in Palestine, or a crib being the last witness of a child’s departure from this world, or dust-covered children’s dolls found with dead bodies.

These remind us that Israeli Zionists are cruel in the true sense of the term. We came to know that Baha Sami Amin Al-Natsheh had become another victim of Zionism. He was the 19-year-old Palestinian who was shot dead by an armed settler in the Palestinian village of Kobar in the West Bank.

She would vehemently protest the way the Palestinians are forced to live in tents, as their houses have been bombed and demolished by the Israelis. Artificial Intelligence, like ImiSight, was used first to survey and then displace thousands of Bedouin Palestinians. Israeli settlers’ vandalism continues in the Osarin and Al-Mughayer villages. Even tents are not spared from Israeli bullets. Palestinian people, especially children, are bitten by rats in the tents.

Israel is killing not only Muslims but also Christians in Palestine. Sites of historical importance are being demolished. The destruction is massive, as the church of Porphyrius has been damaged severely. The Mamluk palace and the Great Omari Mosque were turned into rubble.

Zionists set fire to anti-Zionist houses in Israel. They want to produce a homogeneous community of Zionists. Their message is clear: there is no place for anti-Zionists in Israel. The dictatorship of Zionism is crossing its limit and proving its emptiness. The so-called chosen people are living in a fool’s paradise. Their alleged special privilege does not give them the license to kill and destroy.

Palestinian teachers, students, and researchers are systematically killed by the Israeli military. Schools are bombed and destroyed.

Like many schools in Palestine, Al-Farabi Primary School in Khan Younis was burned by the Israeli army. Where life is very cheap, the right to education is a luxury.

Despite having the statistics, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee refuses to call the mass killing of Palestinians a cold-blooded genocide. Albeit the denial, explosive remnants remain as evidence of genocide and pose a serious threat to the people in Palestine. While the Palestinians suffer and starve, the Israelis enjoy life amidst food, music, and laughter.

No matter how cruel the selfish world is, life goes on. Children find happiness in a makeshift volleyball court in Palestine. After parks are taken over by displaced populations, children play with scrap metal, ride skateboards, splash bathtub water with their hands, and temporarily pull an electric wire to fly like birds before landing on the ground. Their stolen childhood finds temporary respite before the gunshots resume.

If the time gap could be erased, Anne Frank would also love to play with Palestinian and Lebanese children. She would preach peace, trampling on Nazi and Zionist hatred and racism.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.