Anne Frank was 15 years old when she died in a Nazi concentration camp. Yet her words outlived her body. Words scribbled in a diary from a secret attic in Amsterdam became one of the world’s most powerful mirrors.
This summer, I found myself in Amsterdam for Mindvalley U. By chance, my Airbnb was on the street next to Anne Frank’s house. Each morning, I’d step outside and see the same canals, the same cobblestones, and the same rooftops Anne may have glimpsed in stolen moments when she dared peek out from her hiding place.
A few mornings later, I opened the news and froze. The Diary of Anne Frank had just been banned in Florida schools under new book-ban laws. Imagine that. In 2025, one of the most important human documents ever written—the testimony of a teenage Jewish girl hiding from Nazi genocide—was deemed “inappropriate” for children to read.
The synchronicity hit me hard. I was standing before the building where those words were written. Words that survived Anne, even though she did not. Words that outlived war, genocide, and cruelty—only to be silenced again today by politicians who fear truth more than hatred.
And this got me thinking.
If Anne Frank were alive today, what would she say about America? About Israel & Gaza?
What I’m about to share may feel uncomfortable—but Anne’s words demand we face discomfort.
Who was Anne Frank
Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt in 1929. When the Nazis rose to power, her family fled to Amsterdam, hoping to escape persecution. In 1942, when deportations began, they went into hiding in a small annex behind her father’s office. For over two years, Anne, her sister Margot, her parents Otto and Edith, and four others lived in silence, relying on the courage of Dutch friends who smuggled them food and news.
Anne wasn’t just a symbol. She was a teenager—funny, sharp, sometimes rebellious, and always observant. She dreamed of being a journalist. She once wrote, “I want to go on living even after my death.” And, tragically, she did—not through her life, but through her words.
In August 1944, they were betrayed. The Gestapo stormed the annex. The Franks were deported to Westerbork, then Auschwitz, and finally Anne and Margot to Bergen-Belsen. In early 1945, both sisters died of typhus—just weeks before liberation. Anne was 15.
Only Otto Frank survived. After the war, Miep Gies, one of the helpers, handed him Anne’s diary. He published it, fulfilling her dream. Today, it has sold over 30 million copies and been translated into more than 70 languages.
Anne’s body was silenced. But her voice became immortal.
Anne’s words in today’s world
Anne once wrote:
“Terrible things are happening outside. Poor, helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.”
She was describing Nazi roundups in Amsterdam.
But doesn’t that sound eerily like ICE raids in America today? Parents taken in the middle of the night. Children left crying, bewildered, abandoned. Different time, different uniforms—but the same cruelty.
Anne also wrote:
“We are chained to one spot, without rights, a thousand obligations… waiting for the inevitable end.”
That could be the voice of Gaza today. Entire families locked in. Starved. Bombed. Denied freedom of movement. Children asking, “Why must we suffer simply because of who we are?”
Her words, written 80 years ago, read like dispatches from the present. History is not past. It is a loop—unless we break it.
A hard, controversial mirror
Anne’s diary teaches us to look at cruelty honestly, no matter where it comes from. And one thing history proves: atrocities don’t start with bullets. They start with words.
Dehumanizing language always comes first.
So let’s talk about Gaza, as uncomfortable as this may seem.
Consider the echoes:
- Nazi leadership (1943): Heinrich Himmler at Posen: “I am referring here to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people….”
- Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (2023): On the Palestinian town of Huwara: “[Huwara] should be wiped out. I think the State of Israel should do it.”
- Hitler, Mein Kampf: Jews as “the typical parasite, a sponger who, like an infectious bacillus, keeps spreading.” Nazi propaganda routinely cast Jews as vermin.
- Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (2023): Announcing a siege of Gaza: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel… We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
- Nazi propaganda (Goebbels echoing Hitler): Jews blamed collectively for war, threatened with “extermination.”
- Israeli President Isaac Herzog (2023): “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible….” — words widely criticized as endorsing collective punishment.
- Nazi euphemisms: “Evacuation” as code for extermination.
- Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu (2023): Suggesting a nuclear strike on Gaza was “one of the options.”
Different contexts. Different scales. But the same pattern.
Dehumanize → Justify → Destroy.
Anne Frank’s words remind us: when we hear this language, it is never “just rhetoric.” It is the runway to cruelty.
You see, cruelty always begins the same way: when leaders tell us to fear “the other.”
Fear the immigrant.
Fear the refugee.
Fear the neighbor who looks different.
Fear the people beyond your border.
That is the oldest political trick in the book. And it works—unless we refuse to buy it.
Anne Frank didn’t write her diary so we could cry in museums. She wrote it so we could recognize her suffering in others—and have the courage to stop it.
Why giving people a chance matters
This message hit me with even greater force because, while in Amsterdam, I also had a chance encounter.
I bumped into a young Syrian man who once worked for me back in 2016. At the time, he was a refugee in Malaysia. He and his friend had escaped a country torn apart by war. One had seen his home blown to rubble. The other had lost a brother when a bomb fell on the very place his brother was resting.
Both had lived through horrors most of us can barely imagine. And yet, when I met them, I didn’t just see refugees. I saw brilliant young minds. I saw hope, determination, and resilience.
That year, I had an idea for a new learning model called Quest and needed someone to build the app. These two young Syrians built it in record time. That app became the Mindvalley app—today used by millions worldwide and even featured in 200,000 Apple stores on the iPad.
Yes, our app was built by Syrians. Yes, it was built by refugees who were given a chance.
Anne never got her chance. But when we give people that chance, look what can happen.
This is why I am so adamant about this message. When politicians tell you to fear refugees, or immigrants, or minorities, they’re not just lying. They are robbing humanity of its future.
The rule we must all live by
If there’s one rule we must all live by, it’s this:
The moment a leader tells you to fear refugees, minorities, or immigrants, you are looking at a tyrant.
Do not believe them. Do not reward their fear with your silence—or your vote.
Because fear divides. And division always leads to cruelty.
What the world needs now is unity.
Unity across stripes, colors, races, and ethnicities. Unity across cultures, religions, and especially across borders.
Because the only way we solve the greatest challenges facing humanity—from climate change to war to poverty—is to remember this truth:
We are one humanity.
And kindness cannot stop at the invisible lines of race, religion, or border.
The higher vision
Anne Frank once wrote:
“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
That may be the most extraordinary line ever written. She believed it while hiding from people who wanted her dead.
If Anne could believe in human goodness then, we can believe in it now.
Let’s prove her right.
Let’s choose compassion over cruelty.
Let’s stand up for one another across borders.
Let’s silence the voices of fear not by shouting back but by choosing unity again and again.
Because Anne’s diary isn’t just a warning.
It’s a torch.
And it’s in our hands now.
So here’s what we can collectively do.
Stand for unity. Across color. Across race. Across borders. Across religions.
When you hear fear, answer with love.
When you hear division, answer with solidarity.
When a politician uses scapegoating, vote the other way.
The only way to honor Anne is to prove her right—that humanity is good at heart.
And that goodness becomes real when we act.
Because history doesn’t just happen to us. It is written by our choices—and our silence.
I’d like to hear from you: Drop a comment below—let’s create a conversation around unity, compassion, and what it means to stand for humanity in our time.
1,231 Responses
If the intention here was to encourage empathy while writing offensive statements toward the Jewish people, you missed the mark entirely—and that is truly unfortunate. Comparing Nazis, who sought to annihilate Jews simply for being Jews, to foolish ministers in the government of the Jewish people—who indeed made stupid statements but ones that do not reflect reality—is divisive and offensive. The exact opposite of empathy, don’t you think?
The reality is this: on October 7th, Hamas and local civilians who were not formally part of the organization invaded Israel, murdered, tortured, and committed severe crimes against humanity against children, women, men, and the elderly. They kidnapped innocent civilians from their homes and from gatherings of love—some of whom are still suffering and dying in tunnels to this day. So let us focus our energetic efforts on bringing them home safely, increasing the light, rather than publishing statements that may be well-intentioned but only strengthen division and darkness.
You should to be able to see the bigger picture. I am against the war, but the reality is far more complex and completely different from the distortion you described here. You hold great power and influence. Use it to do good, and take the time to research the full picture before publishing an article that causes such harm to such a large population.
I’ll may be harshly ignored or just yelled at, but to Israel/Gaza is the other option? Leaving it like it is? Won’t help Palestinians and neither would Terror Organization like Hamas stop trying to erase the Jewish.
Is that the Point? Giving up a whole religion and the Jewish life for some other People?
Christian Grataloups Atlas of the World shows there neither was a Judean Kingdom nor an Islamic Palestinian one. They BOTH have lived in that Region since forever. Britain shouldn’t have handed it over to the Jews (why in the first place they had to say or decide that?) and say „it’s yours now“. And I’ll won’t forget any Jewish Settler-Agression in Gaza or West Bank.
But „Palestine“ isn’t to happen. They’re militants Hamas Fundamentalists between them and their Goal is to erase Jews.
As a German I cannot let this be „right“.
Nor should suffer these innocent Palestinians for what Hamas is trying since not only Oct 7th. Decimate „from the River….“ any as well innocent Israeli.
Please don’t bring politics into spirituality, as the WWII is much more complex, than an Anne Frank story. Many, many, many Jewish family was sent the middle on the agreement between Zionist Jews and the third reich. Many more was supposed to be sent to Madagascar, but great country of UK decided to occupy and control that country.
And many Jews that fought for Germany in WWI, a war that was not started by them, those Jews were recognized as German citizens.
But leasts not forget this war, the Second World War was stop bolshevism (communism) from spreading throughout Europe.
I support the people Palestine. But I also had family that also fought
Stop Bolshevism. And who created Bolshevism, and started the six day war?
I rarely open emails from my subscription accts, but for some reason today I opened this. Thank you, thank you, thank you for using your influence in this way. My heart felt full reading it. It’s too important to ever forget. I appreciate you for writing and sharing about this dire ongoing issue.
Please don’t bring politics into spirituality, as the WWII is much more complex, than an Anne Frank story. Many, many, many Jewish family was sent the middle on the agreement between Zionist Jews and the third reich. Many more was supposed to be sent to Madagascar, but great country of UK decided to occupy and control that country.
And many Jews that fought for Germany in WWI, a war that was not started by Germany, those Jews were recognized as German citizens.
But leasts not forget this war, the Second World War was stop bolshevism (communism) from spreading throughout Europe.
I support the people of Palestine. But I also had family that also fought to
Stop Bolshevism.
But we all forget the control, British had on many countries, and the result of famine. Which came to rise of famine in these countries. Many middle eastern countries hand became inspired by Germany with the independence that was carving out. And debanking the federal reserve the had. But on a whole other note, Bolshevism started in Russia in 1917 the Russian revolution, which started the gulags, where the concentration camps started for both work and death camps. Many many white Russians, sent by the red Russians. With one of the founding fathers of Bolshevistic revolution being Valdamir Lennin, a Jew.
Though I do understand that everything is connected, but we must be completely honest with history, and how things really happened.
I will still help the common Jew or not, when they’re in need of help..
Love, and with kindest regards
Here Here Vishen! The voices of sanity are getting louder and we will be heard. As awful and despairing the world situation becomes, I still honestly believe that goodness, love and unity is around the corner. Love and blessings always…
Thank you for your humanity, Vishen. So thoughtful and beautifully written. It gave me chills. Your voice matters so much, so thank you for speaking up for the voiceless across the globe.
I am hoping with all my heart this lands somewhere within your inbox.
This email touched intensely and personally.
I cried throughout the whole sharing and then I felt denied. My mother was a holocaust survivor. My Babcha died in one of those camps just an hour after my Mom was taken out of her arms as a small child. My Gadiak born Austrian, Polish camped came to Canada with my Mom and almost all the kids. We are Polish Catholic and to always be denied as a part of such a genocide is heartbreaking. I have had to fight and defend this throughout my life. I have been called a liar in college being brought to tears in class. I felt the desire to share this with a platform such as Mindvalley who does such good in this world.
Please explore this kind of misconception to the world There were 6 million Jewish people killed but there were 5 million others that have never been recognized for the pain we all have had to carry. If at the that time the regime wasn’t prejudiced to all ethnicities why do I feel many are being denied. Hitler didn’t just cleanse the Jewish race he cleansed the world of many.
With Love and Grace
Thank you for speaking up openly and across all borders for solidarity, unity, compassion and humanity.
How could we as Americans have come this far? And the pendulum swung so far in one direction where in the news today, our president said, ‘Maybe We Like a Dictator’: Trump Suggests Many Americans Would Prefer Autocracy. We are not sheep. We need to take a stand. We need to stop eating junk and open our minds.
Thank you for this powerful reflection Vishen – and for being brave enough to share your thoughts, insight and experience! It serves to remind us that we must continue building a better world – one that is more united than divided, more humane – encouraging our true essence “to be good at heart” to shine through. 💖💖💖
Thank you Vishen for your excellent commentary. I’ve read Anne Frank’s diary a few times over the years, and have been to Amsterdam and her house — very moving and thought-provoking. Seeing history repeat itself in the U.S. — a country that opposed and fought against the Nazi regime in WWII — is heart-breaking. Likewise Israel’s actions in Gaza after the Jewish holocaust in WWII. Seeing and hearing about these global hate-filled actions, all based on fear, just brings home the need for each of us to remain peaceful and loving, to raise our vibration and not let fear rule our lives. Speak out for love and acceptance, for understanding and knowledge, and hold the space for peace in your life. (Other books to read and think about: Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here; George Orwell’s 1984; Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale).
We can talk and post all day.
The truth is our taxes paid to kill more Palestinians today and will again tomorrow.
No change of vote helped to save anyone in Gaza.
Good poeole don’t crave power because it corrupts. Leaving the running of the world to the wicked.
If something is of God (Devine Creative Source) it unites, if it isnt then it devides.
Wake up and rejoice if you can. Everyone else knows that suffering isn’t optional.
Thank you for encouraging love and courage……
It is profoundly cynical to exploit the diary of Anne Frank – the words of a murdered Jewish girl – in order to equate Israel with Nazis and Gaza with the Holocaust. Such comparisons are grotesque distortions of history.
What makes this piece even more disturbing is its total silence about October 7th – the single most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Ignoring that atrocity strips Vishen of any claim to objectivity. Worse, erasing October 7th is not neutrality; it is siding with deranged terrorists who butcher innocents and torment even their own people.
Today, 690 days later, Jews are still held hostage by Hamas. The difference now is that the Jewish people have a state and it will fight when its very existence is threatened.
To twist Anne Frank’s diary into a weapon against the Jewish state is not moral courage it is moral bankruptcy.
Did you fact-check the statement that Anne Frank’s diary was banned in Florida? Ten seconds with a fact-checking AI was enough to identify this statement as “misleading” at best—the text of Anne Frank’s diary was NOT banned from Florida schools. Please fact-check before posting.
First of all, you are incorrect and DeSantis has said the book is on the recommended reading list in Florida.
2nd, you clearly have no idea of what’s going on in Gaza. Do you know the details of 10-07? All the details of the rapes, burning of people, sexual violence?
Do you even know that Hamas and the Palestinians have refused to release the hostages?
Do you even know that thousands of Palestinians were part of 10-07 massacre?
Do you even know that they are using human shields on purpose to create this illusion that Israel is out to kill civilians?
Do you even understand Islam and the implications of martyrdom?
Do you even know the history of Israeli attempts to foster a peace agreement and create a Palestinian state? (like with Clinton and Arafat for one?)
Do you even understand the implications of the involvement of Haj Amin Al-Husseini and how he convinced a lot of Arabs to leave in 1948 so that they could slaughter the new Zionists. (obviously didnt work)
Do you even know that Israel GAVE Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005 and they voted in Hamas?
Do you even know that Hamas steals food and prevents it from being distributed?
Do you even know that many of the “starving” children are suffering from genetic issues?
Do you even know that the population of Gaza has multiplied many times over? So I guess Israel is doing a pretty lousy job of committing genocide.
Do you even know the extent that Israel takes to warn Palestinians before they take military action?
Do you even know who you’re promoting? The same people starving hostages and who killed the Bibas children with their bare hands.
Do you know that many of the videos are FAKE? It’s called Gazawood and. you can find videos of them making videos which clearly shows how they’re trying to create propaganda and guess what? You fell for it.
Go ahead Vishen and visit there. Sadly, you would be killed pretty fast for being a Hindu. Or gay, or a westerner, or anyone with an independent mind.
But go ahead and peddle your propaganda. You have no idea what the truth is but I guess you’re rich and run a big company so you probably think you know everything.
Thank you Vishen! Thank you for vividly bringing to the surface what lots of us pretend to not see maybe because we feel frozen and helpless. Thank you for this call for Love and Unity that inspires me to take action and spread the word. 😀
Hi… I’ve always loved your work, and I know you’re writing this from a good place.
But do you genuinely want a conversation??
If so… let’s really have one…
Why does this email not say anything about Hamas?
It’s well documented that they and the UN have not picked up the 950 truckloads of food that Israel let in.
Did you speak out about the atrocities against Israelis October 7?
They videotaped themselves murdering and raping Israelis and livestreamed it on Facebook.
Are you speaking out about the atrocities in the Sudan or Congo or Yemen or Syria?
MANY more children and people are starving and murdered by radical Islamist terrorists.
Have you spoken clearly out about how Hamas is putting their people in harm’s way?
It’s very well documented that Hamas operates out of schools and hospitals.
Have you spoken about how Egypt has closed its border to Gaza with tighter security than Israel?
Look it up.
I hope you know that UN employees were part of October 7.
I hope you know that Gazan children spit at Israeli hostages and Gazan children danced like it was New Years Eve when Israeli babies were in coffins before them.
I hope you also are aware that Gazan children are taught to hate Jews. Not Israelis. Jews. That’s why the EU pulled funding for their schools.
I personally don’t think ALL Gazans are terrible, AND there’s a bigger issue here that you’re not addressing.
I’m also geniunely curious what you would say if thousands of Canadians came into the US and raped, murdered and kidnapped babies and grandmothers.
You might also in a moment of rage and passion say something like “I’m going to kill them all!”
To use a Jewish girl’s words now to compare Israel to Nazis is disturbing and shows complete lack of understanding.
And before you say “I have Jewish friends who…”
I have black friends who don’t believe in DEI too, but that doesn’t make them right.
Now do you want a conversation where you hear more than what Hamas has gotten into mainstream media?
I hope you do. Let’s have it. I sent you an email. Let’s talk.
I am still shocked after reading your post. Shocked because of the casual, lazy and dishonest manner you have used the story of Anne Frank – comparing the words she wrote in a dark small room, with the enemy all around, not able to move or to breathe fresh air and with the knowledge that all the enemy outside wanted was the absolute destruction of people of her faith – Jews, not Syrian refugees. Moreover, the fact that the conditions that she was forced to live under, in that dark airless room, are the same conditions the 280 hostages – including babies and children – that were taken from their homes by modern day Nazis, were, and are still forced to live and die in, has absolutely no resonance in your shocking diatribe, is telling and shameful.
Where have you been that you cannot even bring yourself to mention the hostages or the attack on innocent Israelis that started the war – a war supported by over 90% Palestinian’s in Gaz? Your suggestions of genocide being committed by Israel are both morally repugnant and indescribably ignorant. If Israel was committing genocide – which is the deliberate aim of eradicating a race from existence – then why has Israel delivered over 2 million tonnes of aid into Gaza? Why are there over 2 million arabs living free lives in Israel? There are over 2 million people living in Gaza and since the war began – with an invasion by the Gazans into Israel with the specific intention of murdering as many people as possible and taking as many hostages as possible, irrespective of their age – the Hamas Health ministry has declared that israel has killed over 65,000 – mostly they say women and children. Clearly, Hamas’s army is comprised only of women and children. If Israel was intent on committing genocide in the manner you are suggesting is comparable to what happened to the Jews then they are not making a very good fist of it. Any death, particularly children is to be deeply regretted and avoided. Israel has done all it can to mitigate these losses – the claims to the contrary by Hamas, echoed by the UN, legacy media and now by you, have so often been found to be no more than Hamas propaganda. The nos of women and children the UN claimed were killed by Israel was quietly, so quietly you couldn’t even hear it, halved by the UN – an organisation not known for ever admitting it got something wrong as it consistently does. How many of you know that after the last Gaza war, the UN reluctantly published a revision of the numbers of Palestinian deaths it had also consistently used against israel in the media and in its attempts to influence the outcome? It reduced the numbers by nearly 2/3rds – but this was neither picked up by legacy media, nor was it pushed to the media in any way by the UN but quietly pushed under the carpet.
The reality is that war sucks. Innocents are killed.
Let me ask you Vishen, and all of you who agree with what Vishen said, how much aid was dropped by the Allies in the 2nd world war that saw some 2 million innocent German women and children killed? None is the answer. Yet, you dare to suggest that Israel, which has delivered the equivalent of 1 tonne of aid per inhabitant, is committing genocide in the same way the Nazis did?
Given that over 2 million German women and children were killed in the war, how many of you had relatives that fought in that war against the Nazi horde that invaded Europe and killed its people? They must, based on your findings of Anne Frank’s readings be war criminals, given that no aid was offered or received and so many died – unlike Israel’s actual record of doing so.
Let me ask you one final question. To all of you who shout Israel is committing genocide – how many are willing to look their grandparents in the eyes and accuse them of being war criminals? After all, they participated in a war started by the Nazis, resulting in the death of over 2 million German women and children.
I know that soon enough the truth will emerge. It will, again, disappear very quickly because it challenges the narrative that people like you have pushed. Very few, however, have stooped as low as to “quote” Anne Frank as a platform for your virtue signalling.
Andre, you seem to be in a bubble of misinformation. Encouraging you to change your sources and read. There is absolutely no discussion on whether Israel is committing a genocide and war crimes. Gaza was created by Israelis stealing land from the original inhabitants- Palestinians. Hamas is a creation of Israel to avoid a peace process. Netanyahu openly admits to funding Hamas himself to this end. Read and inform yourself rather than adopt Israel’s rewrite of history and propaganda. October 7th killings were a massacre but doesn’t justify genocide mass murders kidnappings executions and atrocities ongoing for 700 days. And you need to understand the larger context and history that led to it. Furthermore Israeli military and government knew about October 7th and canceled border patrols that morning. This is documented in Knesset hearings.
The sources I have quoted are from the UN – or are now going to suggest that the UN is controlled by the Jewish lobby? I have told you my sources – I actually state them in my comment – but like much of the truth behind the situation any inconvenient fact is literally invisible to people who believe what they want to believe rather than the facts. A bit like Vishen unfortunately in his article. What are your sources?
How about you also answer my questions instead of telling me to change my reading sources?
As to the Knesset hearings, what was documented was that the Israeli armed forces didn’t believe that Hamas would break the ceasefire and ignored the sudden spate of activity reported by the forward observation post. All the girls in that observation point were subsequntly either raped then murdered or raped and taken as hostages by Hamas and starved and raped repeatedly thereafter. That too is in the Knesset report. The border patrols were canceled – as they usually are during a major Jewish religous holiday. Was it a mistake? A massive one; one that Hamas was waiting for as they did in 1973 when the Arab armies attacked israel on their holiest religious festival of Yom Kippur. The Israeli military’s criminal arrogance in ignoring the warnings given the day before October 7th – and there is no other way of describing their behaviour – was based on the false premise that Israel could trust Hamas not to attack when they had agreed a ceasefire. To suggest though this was all planned is at the same level as those other conspiracy nuts who claim that Israel was behind 9/11.
As for Netanyahu “funding” Hamas; that too is twisting the facts to suit your narrative. When Israel supports the people in Gaza – as it did for many years – in your view this is really some demonic scheme cooked up by Netanyahu to finance Hamas to take action against his own people so he could attack and destroy Hamas in Gaza. 9/11 all over again. Really?
I stand by what I said about the appalling level of ignorance and virtue signalling behind Vishen’s article and his cynical use of the words of Anne Frank to support his narrative; a narrative bereft of any understanding of her actual message; the circumstances under which it was written and bereft of any actual facts behind October 7th or the aftermath. As the Nazis found out – if you don’t want to be defeated, don’t start the war.
As to your reading of the situation, the belief the Palestinian’s were there before etc etc; even the Palestinian leadership publicly admitted that the “Palestinian’s” were a creation of The Moslem Brotherhood from Egypt who parachuted the Egyptian Yasser Arafat into the fray, making him the leader of the Russian formed PLO – or are you now going to tell me that Yasser Arafat was “Palestinian”? I am sure if you delve shallowly enough you will find plenty of source material – much of it from the Palestinian side – that explicitly supports what I have just said.