Anna Ardin, Swedish leftist pundit and deacon in the ultra-progressive Swedish Lutheran Church, has raised eyebrows by saying she sees Anne Frank in the children in Gaza.
In an article on the Substack channel Konkretisten, Ardin writes:
When I saw a list of names of children among the tens of thousands dead in Gaza, I caught myself looking for young teenagers … to see Anne. I see girls clinging to their siblings in the ruins, starving, trembling with fear. I see Bergen-Belsen, the language of evil from my childhood, in the present day on Instagram.
And in making the comparison, Ardin paints her comparison as doing something brave: “I know that the comparison is forbidden. I know that it provokes anger. I know that it threatens my assignments, my career, and my reputation.”
But comparing Holocaust victims to the fallout of a war Hamas began with the worst massacre of Jews since 1945 is hardly a brave act of empathy, especially in a country where demonstrations in support of Palestinians are frequent and explicitly antisemitic.
Samnytt did not mince words in an editorial about the statement, saying Ardin
takes the most well-known face and tragic life story of the most systematic antisemitic genocide in modern history and exploits it in a statement in support of Hamas, which bears responsibility for the worst massacre of Jews in contemporary times, has the annihilation of the Jewish state as its goal … It is not only deeply distasteful – it is also misleading and devoid of historical context.
Ardin is the Swedish leftist who, in 2012, had a consensual sexual affair with Julian Assange and then, when he moved on to someone else, convinced that woman to join her in reporting Assange for sexual assault, which started his 14-year legal ordeal and eventual imprisonment in London. Assange was extradited and released after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing American military secrets earlier this year.
