Hezbollah bars Anne Frank book

Hezbollah pressured a private school in Beirut to drop from its curriculum a textbook containing excerpts of “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

The English-language school, which asked not to be identified, acceded to pressure after Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station ran a segment chiding the school for including the posthumously published Holocaust memoir in its lessons, the French news agency AFP reported.

Hezbollah, which Israel and the United States consider a terrorist group, called the diary’s inclusion part of “an open arena for the Zionist invasion of education.”

Attorney Naim Kalaani, a member of a committee to ban Zionist products, told Al-Manar the use of the book in a school constituted a violation of Lebanon’s penal code and “tantamount to a step toward normalization” in ties with Israel. Hezbollah could not be reached by the station for comment. (JTA)