Proceeds of Anne Frank's diary sales to go to New Israel Fund
The Anne Frank Fonds and the New Israel Fund have teamed up in a new venture.
By GIL HOFFMANUpdated: APRIL 12, 2018 15:45Anne Frank in 1940, while at 6. Montessorischool, Niersstraat 41-43, Amsterdam(photo credit: PUBLIC DOMAIN)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to harm the New Israel Fund endured another blow on Wednesday, as the left-wing umbrella group announced a partnership with the Anne Frank Fonds, the foundation founded by her father, Otto Frank, which administers her diary.Netanyahu instructed coalition chairman David Amsalem last Tuesday to establish a parliamentary committee of inquiry to look into the group’s activities that, he charged, endanger “the security and future of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people.”Since then, donations to the New Israel Fund have skyrocketed, with NIS 800,000 donated by Israelis and another NIS 200,000 in North America. The deal with the Anne Frank Fonds was signed last month, but purposely announced on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day.A New Israel Fund spokesman said the charity was aware of Netanyahu’s attack but decided to proceed with the deal anyway.“Anne Frank is a symbol of humanity, justice, tolerance and acceptance of the other,” the Anne Frank Fonds said in a statement. “These values are the main focus of the work of the New Israel Fund in helping Israel become more democratic and bettering Israeli society.”The Anne Frank Fonds, which is based in Basel, Switzerland, has donated hundreds of thousands of Swiss francs annually to causes in Israel, in addition to fighting antisemitism and supporting projects around the world like the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund. It was founded by Otto Frank on January 24, 1963.The sole survivor of the Frank family and thus Anne Frank’s heir, Otto designated the Anne Frank Fonds as his heir. That is why the foundation owns and administers the rights to her diary and all of her writings.New Israel Fund director-general Mickey Gitzin said cooperating with the Anne Frank Fonds would strengthen his organization’s activities on multiple issues, including the struggle for social justice, advancing coexistence and women’s rights, and the fight against racism.Netanyahu accused the New Israel Fund on his Facebook page of being a “foreign” organization that receives money from foreign governments and organizations hostile to Israel, such as those funded by US billionaire George Soros.The principal aim of the New Israel Fund, he wrote, is to “erase the Jewish nature of Israel and turn it into a state of all its citizens – alongside a Palestinian state free of Jews along the 1967 lines, with Jerusalem as its capital.”