Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

South African Students Create Palestinian Anne Frank For Israel Apartheid Week

Doctored images depicting Holocaust victim Anne Frank dressed in a Palestinian keffiyeh circulated around a South African university on Wednesday.

The picture was designed as part of the Palestinian Solidarity Committee at Witwatersrand University’s annual “Israel Apartheid Week.”

“This is a flyer that draws attention to the fact that the same racism, hardship and oppression that was faced by Jews during the Nazi times is now being directed towards Palestinians,” a student who helped design the photo tweeted.

The fliers have been posted in atleast 35 different locations around campus.

The South African Union of Jewish Students expressed “disgust” at the initiative, calling it “a gross form of cultural appropriation towards a figure that is symbolic of the plight of the Jewish people.”

One Jewish student accused the activists of “distorting history to fit their own political agenda,” adding that “using Anne Frank, a Jewish Holocaust victim, to promote a blatantly anti-Semitic agenda is as low as it gets.”

Shortly after Apartheid Week began on campus, phrases including “f**k Zionism” and “Zionism is racism” were found spray-painted around campus. The graffiti has since been removed, according to SAUJS.

Contact Haley Cohen at hcohen@forward.com

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.

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

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version