Anne Frank Trust under fire for inviting guest speaker who allegedly claimed Israeli Jews are committing a “Holocaust”

The Anne Frank Trust has launched an internal investigation after it was revealed that one of its guest speakers had claimed that Jewish Israelis were committing a “Holocaust”.

The Trust, whose aim is to educate children to challenge prejudice, had invited Nasima Begum to lead a creative storytelling workshop for children. However, a series of social media posts from 2011 and 2012 were uncovered in which Ms Begum compared Israel to Nazi Germany.

In 2011, Ms Begum allegedly wrote on Twitter that “What’s sad is that the Jewish population faced genocide themselves in Hitler’s Germany but they’ve implemented the same on Palestine for years.”

A year later, Ms Begum allegedly took to Twitter again to say of the conflict between Israel and the genocidal antisemitic terror group Hamas that had recently taken place that “It’s the Holocaust all over again except this time it’s innocent Palestinians and ironically the perpetrators are you Zionist scum.”

According to the International Definition of Antisemitism, “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is an example of antisemitism.

Responding to the controversy, the Trust tweeted that “It has been brought to our attention that a freelance arts practitioner we employed in one of our educational workshops last week may have views that are not consistent with our values. We are launching an investigation into these concerns. We will publish a summary of the findings and any resulting action on our website as soon as possible. In the meantime, we are removing all promotion of the workshop from our social media.”

This is not the first time that the Anne Frank Trust has drawn controversy over its activities and personnel.

Image credit: Jewish News