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‘Anne Frank was in Amsterdam legally,’ Trump antisemitism envoy says in refuting Walz’s ICE comparison
(JTA) — In the lead-up to International Holocaust Remembrance Day, both the State Department’s antisemitism envoy and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum criticized Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz for invoking Anne Frank in discussions of federal immigration raids.
The remarks by Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, the antisemitism envoy nominated by President Trump, that “Anne Frank was in Amsterdam legally and abided by Dutch law” added fuel to an ongoing debate over the appropriateness of modern-day comparisons to the Holocaust. Other Jewish leaders have mobilized in force against immigration agents in the state.
“Ignorance like this cheapens the horror of the Holocaust,” Kaploun tweeted Monday.
He was responding to Walz’s press conference over the weekend, in which the former Democratic vice-presidential candidate stated, “We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank.”
Kaploun continued with a dig at the state’s large migrant community, the focus of chaotic Immigrations and Customs Enforcement activity that has prompted intense criticism and led to the shooting deaths of two protesters.
“Anne Frank was in Amsterdam legally and abided by Dutch law. She was hauled off to a death camp because of her race and religion. Her story has nothing to do with the illegal immigration, fraud, and lawlessness plaguing Minnesota today,” the envoy wrote. “Our brave law enforcement should be commended, not tarred with this historically illiterate and antisemitic comparison.”
His comments were followed two hours later by the Holocaust museum’s, which rebuked Walz while avoiding the subject of ICE operations. Walz, a former public school teacher, wrote his master’s thesis on Holocaust education.
“Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish,” the museum tweeted Monday. “Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable. Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges.”
CNN anchor Jake Tapper, who is Jewish, last week rebuked a guest for comparing ICE detention facilities to concentration camps.
But in the week since, even some conservatives have joined the voices comparing ICE to the Gestapo, as a backlash against ICE has brewed. That backlash appeared to escalate in the hours after the statements from Kaploun and the museum, including from within the Trump administration.
Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol commander-at-large who has led federal immigration enforcement in Minneapolis and has himself decried growing comparisons between ICE and the Gestapo, is reportedly set to leave the city, and a judge has ordered acting ICE director Todd Lyons to appear in federal court. Pressure also continues to mount on other officials including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Trump’s Jewish far-right immigration advisor Stephen Miller.
Kaploun’s comments about Anne Frank — echoed by other State Department officials — were the latest in years’ worth of controversies over whether her family are an appropriate analogue to modern-day immigration. The comparison also arose in response to the first Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and was incorporated into a 2021 animated adaptation of Frank’s diary.
Some historians pointed out that Kaploun’s remark that Frank “was in Amsterdam legally and abided by Dutch law” belies the fact that the Frank family had defied official papers ordering Anne’s sister Margot to report to a labor camp.
“The Frank family ignored their call-up, meaning they were officially in Amsterdam illegally from this point on,” Joel Swanson, a Jewish studies professor at Sarah Lawrence College, wrote on BlueSky. “The Trump administration is doing Holocaust revisionism to avoid the possibility of empathy for migrants.”
Others noted the escalation in Nazi race laws that progressively and systematically excluded Jews from public life in Europe.
“The German regime first created mass statelessness to facilitate the Holocaust,” historian and author John Ganz wrote in response to Kaploun. “In every European country occupied by the Nazis, collaborationist governments might nominally protect citizen Jews, but were happy and relieved to see stateless and ‘illegal’ immigrants disappear.”
The post ‘Anne Frank was in Amsterdam legally,’ Trump antisemitism envoy says in refuting Walz’s ICE comparison appeared first on The Forward.
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Lindsey Graham urges Israel not to strike Iranian oil depots even as he says he helped make war happen
(JTA) — Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has called on Israel to rein in its attacks on Iranian oil infrastructure, marking a rare note of caution from a Republican lawmaker who has said he helped push the United States to join Israel in waging war against Iran.
In a post on X on Sunday, Graham praised Israel for its role in the war before adding that “there will be a day soon that the Iranian people will be in charge of their own fate, not the murderous ayatollah’s regime.”
“In that regard, please be cautious about what targets you select,” continued Graham. “Our goal is to liberate the Iranian people in a fashion that does not cripple their chance to start a new and better life when this regime collapses. The oil economy of Iran will be essential to that endeavor.”
Graham’s post linked to an Axios article that reported that the United States was alarmed by Israeli strikes over the weekend that targeted 30 Iranian fuel depots. On Monday, U.S. gas prices rose to their highest levels since 2024.
The warning from Graham, an ally of President Donald Trump and staunch supporter of Israel, comes days after the Republican hawk told the Wall Street Journal that he had played a key role in urging Trump to strike Iran.
Prior to the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, Graham made several trips to Israel where he met with members of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whom he said he coached on how to lobby Trump to strike Iran.
“They’ll tell me things our own government won’t tell me,” Graham told the newspaper.
On Monday, Graham also directed his criticism at Saudi Arabia’s decision to stay on the sidelines of the campaign against Iran.
“It is my understanding the Kingdom refuses to use their capable military as a part of an effort to end the barbaric and terrorist Iranian regime who has terrorized the region and killed 7 Americans,” wrote Graham in a post on X Monday. “Question – why should America do a defense agreement with a country like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that is unwilling to join a fight of mutual interest?”
The post Lindsey Graham urges Israel not to strike Iranian oil depots even as he says he helped make war happen appeared first on The Forward.
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Belgian officials investigating synagogue explosion as possible act of terrorism
(JTA) — Belgian officials are investigating an explosion in front of a synagogue in Liège early Monday as a possible act of terrorism.
The explosion, which took place at 4 a.m., damaged the door of the historic neo-Romanesque synagogue and blew out the windows of multiple buildings across the street. No injuries were reported.
A range of Belgian politicians, including the prime minister and the mayor of Liège, characterized the explosion as act of antisemitism.
“Antisemitism is an attack on our values and our society, and we must fight it unequivocally,” Prime Minister Bart de Wever said in a statement. “We stand in solidarity with the Jewish community in Liege and across the country.”
The explosion comes amid a surge of concern about possible attacks by agents associated with the Iranian regime, against which the United States and Israel launched a war last week. Iran has a long record of supporting attacks on Jewish targets abroad, including two bombings in the 1990s in Argentina that killed more than 100 people at the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community center. Now, with Iran being pummeled at home, watchdogs are warning that it might lash out through its Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, responsible for attacks abroad.
Azerbaijan said Friday that it had foiled multiple terror attacks planned by Iranian agents on Jewish sites. In London, four men were arrested last week for allegedly spying on the Jewish community for Iran, with the intent of planning attacks against the community. And a string of shootings at synagogues in Toronto has ignited concern in Canada, too.
Iranian agents have taken aim at non-Jewish targets, too. On Friday, a Pakistani man who prosecutors said had been directed by Iran’s IRGC was convicted of plotting to assassinate President Donald Trump.
The attack in Liège, in the primarily French-speaking Wallonia province, comes amid a range of recent developments that have unsettled Belgian Jews, who number approximately 30,000. They include antisemitic carnival caricatures in the city of Aalst; a ban on ritual slaughter preventing the local production of kosher meat; and an ongoing row between U.S. and Belgian officials over Jewish circumcision practices. The attack also follows a 2014 shooting in which a gunman associated with the Islamic State, a rival to Iran’s Islamic Republic, shot four people to death at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.
A spokesperson for the Liège police described the effects to the area as “only material damage” to the 1899 building. Rabbi Joshua Nejman told local media that he was hoping that security footage would reveal the perpetrator.
“I’m going to try to calm my heart, because it is beating faster and faster this morning,” said Nejman, who said he had been at the synagogue for 25 years.
“Liege is home to a very small but vibrant Jewish community where I personally grew up,” Eitan Bergman, vice president of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organisations in Belgium, told Reuters. “Today, the feelings among our community members are a mixture of sadness, worry and profound shock.”
Liege’s mayor, Willy Demeyer, praised the synagogue community to RBTF, Belgium’s French-language national broadcaster. He added, “We cannot allow foreign conflicts to be imported into our city.”
The post Belgian officials investigating synagogue explosion as possible act of terrorism appeared first on The Forward.
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The Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life, 2025
In honor of The Algemeiner‘s 12th annual gala, we are proud to present our “J100” list — 100 individuals who have positively influenced Jewish life over the past year.