Released in January to much fanfare, Rosemary Sullivan’s The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation, brings the genre of true-crime writing to the Shoah. Based on a six-year investigation by a self-styled “cold-case team” that included a former FBI agent and employed the latest developments in big-data analysis and artificial intelligence, the book concludes with “85-percent” certainty that a Jew named Arnold van den Bergh betrayed the location of Anne Frank and her family to the SS. Historians and careful readers have already exposed the flimsiness of the case against van den Bergh, but that might be the least of the book’s problems. Jonathan Tobin writes:

Since we know the identity of the true culprit—Hitler—the mechanics of the Frank family’s exposure would not really seem to matter much. . . . But the book was praised for Sullivan’s narrative skills and the picture she painted of life in wartime Holland as seen through the prism of detectives searching for the truth about the identity of the person who cut short the life of a beloved figure. Stories in newspapers around the world heralded their achievement, with some, like Britain’s Daily Mail, employing headlines that proclaimed, “Anne Frank was betrayed by a JEWISH notary.”

The book seemed to be a classic example of what [Dara] Horn has called “Holocaust inversion”—the perverse rendering of the Shoah in which Jews are blamed for their own fate. Just as Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem had focused on the notion that “without Jewish help,” the murder of the 6 million would not have been possible, the idea that van den Bergh, and not a Dutch traitor, had been responsible for the fate of the Franks was the latest example of how the Diary of a Young Girl had become a means by which the non-Jewish world could absolve itself of any responsibility for what happened during the Holocaust.

The problem here is not that the cold-case team and Sullivan failed to provide a convincing answer to the question asked by those who visit the Anne Frank House. Regardless of what might well have been their good intentions, by the time their investigation concluded, its purpose was not to honor Anne’s memory or that of the millions of other Jewish victims. Rather, it was to exploit and profit in a familiar manner from the story of their fate—to portray it as just another notorious homicide. That they did so by ultimately coming up with a Jewish villain for their drama makes it even worse.

Tobin aptly cites Horn’s quip that the murdered teenager is “everyone’s (second) favorite dead Jew.” In Sullivan’s telling, the story of her betrayal resembles a popular version of the story of the betrayal of the world’s favorite dead Jew.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.