The Anne Frank Operation

At my Facebook account yesterday, I uploaded the story of Rabbi Susan Silverman's new idea.


In short:

A group of Israeli rabbis, including the sister of comedian Sarah Silverman, launched Tuesday an Anne Frank-inspired activist program calling on Israelis to hide African asylum seekers facing forced expulsion from Israel in their homes.

The Anne Frank Home Sanctuary movement hopes to assist the near 40,000 African asylum seekers predominately from Eritrea and Sudan that the Israeli government intends to deport either to their homelands or another sub-Saharan state beginning in April and over the coming two years.

And I added this comment:

S. Silverman's sister basically comparing Israel to Nazi Germany: hunting down poor human beings to be taken away in cattle cars.

Here's the Newsweek headline:

ANNE FRANK MOVEMENT: HUNDREDS OF RABBIS PROMISE TO HIDE AFRICAN REFUGEES FACING DEPORTATION IN ISRAEL

Donations are through Rabbis for Human Rights.

Yosef Abramowitz was angered:

yisrael, you are better than that. there are enough affidavits and evidence of so many asylum seekers who left Israel who ended up dead in other african countries or drowned trying to cross the sea. no one compared to Nazi Germany but we always say to the world that there are lessons learned from the Holocaust and admiring the courage of righteous gentiles who hid Anne Frank and others is one of them. Let s not slander what could be life saving actions that we are obligated to do anyway under the 1951 international convention that young Israel championed right after the Holocaust.

I will not enter the argument of how did these people get here, why they wanted to come, what are their physical security concerns, their economic ones, etc. I am simply pointing out to a travesty being done on Jewish history, Jewish memory and maligning the state of Israel.

My response to Yosef: 

One could have declared a "Sanctuary City" model like California but the group chose Anne Frank. Anne was legally in the Netherlands Dutch [corrected: she was born in Germany]. She wasn't a transient immigrant who illegally entered the Netherlands and the Dutch were not following through on a voluntary expulsion scheme. Silverman and you, I presume, are engaging in a heinous propaganda trip of anti-Israel defamation and demonization. You quite definitely are comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. Shame on you!

I am amazed there is even a defense of the naming.

_____________________

UPDATE

Alternative Name Suggestion

The Rahab Operation

Joshua 2:2- And it was told the king of Jericho, saying: 'Behold, there came men in hither to-night of the children of Israel to search out the land.' 3 And the king of Jericho sent unto Rahab, saying: 'Bring forth the men that are come to thee, that are entered into thy house; for they are come to search out all the land.' 4 And the woman took the two men, and hid them...

^