Anne Frank: A Voice Against Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism rough draft
Thursday, November 19, 1942 in Holland, Germany, Jews are severely restricted due to the German occupation. “I feel wicked sleeping in a warm bed, while my dearest friends have been knocked down or have fallen into a gutter somewhere out in the cold night. I get frightened when I think of close friends who have now been delivered into the hands of the cruelest brutes that walk the earth. And all because they are Jews!" (48). Anne Frank wrote this passage in her diary as she expressed the discrimination of the Jews during the Second World War. Discrimination and prejudice have been in our world for as long as humans have lived. Discrimination has caused problems in societies all throughout history, but despite all of

the terrible things that have occurred, and all of the ways people try and learn from these mistakes, anti-Semitism cannot be prevented in the modern world.

There will always be prejudices and discrimination no matter how educated humans become. Anti-Semitism is the prejudice against Jews and is a form of discrimination that has caused some of the most severe problems throughout history. Anti-Semitism has benefited the Israelites and the Jewish faith as a whole, by depicting Israel as the Jewish Holy Land.
The Jewish religion probably received the most attention out of any other religion throughout time because they have fought over a specific piece of land that they call Canaan (modern day Israel) and believe that it is their land because God gave it to them. One of the most popular stories of the Old Testament explains the history behind the land of the Israelites, which is referred to as the story of Moses. The story of Moses parting the Red Sea is one of the most famous stories in the Old Testament. The Israelites had escaped slavery in Egypt and focused on reaching Canaan (Israel) the land that God had promised them. Before the escape, however, the Egyptians carried

out one of the first examples of anti-Semitism with the way they enslaved the Israelites. This has been one of the first forms of anti-Semitism ever. Moses helped free the Israelites from Egypt. Some Jews (Israelites) have lived in Israel from then through the present day, however they did not always own the land. The Egyptians prejudices against the Jews have popularized one of the most commonly know story around the world and this form of anti-Semitism has impacted knowledge on human beings about the Jews declaration of Israel. The area of ancient Israel was predominantly Jewish until they had suffered through the Jewish-Roman wars in 70 A.D. and in conclusion had lost their land and became a minority in most regions. This time period is when Israel had adopted the name of Palestine due to the residing Palestinians (Arabs). Palestine was created from the derivative that first appears in Greek literature in the 5th century BCE when the historian Herodotus called an area of Egypt “Palaistinē,” due to the Philistines who lived there. After the Jewish-Roman wars the Jews became an easy target for discrimination due to their small population and inability to defend themselves. However, this longed their vengeance to reclaim their predestined land.
Jews have claimed that Palestinians have been anti-Semitic from targeting Israel. According to Ali Abunimah a writer and an activist, humans have seen the charge of anti-Semitism being used, he says, “I think, in the United States and particularly on campuses to try to silence all discussion of Israel, precisely for some of the reasons that Peter Novick pointed out, which is that Israel has been losing in the public debate. Palestinians haven’t been gaining, but relatively it’s a gain, and so if you can’t win the debate, the best thing to do is to try to stop it. And the best way to try to stop it is to try to make people too scared to indulge in it. And the way to do that is to tar any discussion of the topic with the specter of anti-Semitism, which of course, since Jewish history has become in a way sacrosanct in the United States, particularly with the focus on the Nazi holocaust, which is now taught in most public schools by law in many states in the United States.” Abunimah clarifies that the reason people believe targeting Israel can be anti-sematic is because Peter Novick and many other American historians believe Israel has been losing in public debates against Palestinians. This demonstrates the importance anti-Semitism is used by the Israelis and Jews to keep their land.
On September 1st, 1939 the Nazi party declared war on the allied powers.

This started a whole new form of anti-Semitism by means of the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborations. Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." Nazis believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, considered "inferior," were an alien threat to the German racial community. This terrifying form of anti-Semitism was depicted and revealed by many famous writers in the 1940s such as Anne Frank. At the end of the war, most Jewish survivors were unable or unwilling to return to Eastern Europe due to the postwar anti-Semitism and the destruction of their communities during the Holocaust. The allied powers had established a large displaced persons (DP) camp. In 1947, the Jewish displaced person population reached approximately 250,000. As the Jews endured this crisis, the British government decided to submit the problem of Palestine to the United Nations. The United Nations then voted on November 29, 1947, to make Palestine into two new states, one Jewish and the other Palestinian (Arab). The Palestinians did not agree with this due to their history with the Jewish faith. On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, announced the formation of the state of Israel, stating that due to the Holocaust, the Jews were

in urgent need of reestablishment. Which solved the problem of Jewish homelessness by allowing Jews to live in Israel. The Holocaust was an obvious form of anti-Semitism and as a result the Jews were able to reclaim their taken land, again.
The Israelites claimed Israel before 1400 B.C. and it is still being fought over in the modern era. Palestinians today still want their land back from the Jews and there are still conflicts between the two races such as riots and forms of anti-Semitic revolts. Although the Holocaust was a fierce massacre of Jews, as a result the Jews reclaimed the land that they were once given by God. The Jewish faith has been one of the first religions to be discriminated against however, without this discrimination known as anti-Semitism the Jewish faith would be left as nothing.