Yes, Virginia, There is a Famous Belgian ...

... Or, rather, an infamous one.

His name's Christoph D'Haese.  He's Burgomeester (mayor) of the Belgian city of Aalst in old East Flanders, and a member of the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie, which, being translated, means New Flemish Alliance.

Once upon a time, in another city in what is now Belgium, live cats were thrown from a belfry tower to their deaths on a carnival day held during Lent.  That vile barbarism, a product of the Middle Ages, apparently persisted until 1817.

In Aalst during Lent there is also a carnival day.  

No, they don't sacrifice cats. 

But they do sacrifice all pretensions to human decency by (would you believe this, post-Shoah!?) including hideous depictions of Jews in the carnival parade, depictions that would do credit to Julius Streicher and the rest of the Nazi fiends were those monsters still alive. 

Here's how a senior American academic, Eliot A, Cohen, calling it out for the antisemitism that it is, described the obnoxious spectacle from last year:

"On Sunday, a float rolled down the streets of Aalst, a Belgian town, for carnival. It featured two grotesque caricatures of Hasidic Jews, hooked noses, hands reaching out for money, and a rat sitting on money bags. That’s 2019. A second float ... —in Marburg, Germany, in 1936—featured celebrants dressed as Orthodox Jews. The only real difference is that the former was more elaborately and professionally executed, and if anything more grotesque."

[Photos of the two floats at source]

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTNO2KKNtJk

 To quote The Independent newspaper at the time:

 'A carnival parade which featured Jewish caricatures standing amid piles of money has been compared to Nazi antisemitic propaganda and provoked fierce criticism in Belgium. One float in the city of Aalst’s annual feast on Sunday was decorated with two huge figures of men with large sideburns, crooked noses and wearing shtreimels, a fur hat worn by some Orthodox Jews. One had a rat on his shoulder.

It was followed by several trucks on which dozens of dancing people wore similar outfits....

“The caricatures, like those of Der Stürmer, of Jews with a crooked nose and suitcases, are typical of the Nazism of 1939,” a spokesperson for Belgium’s Forum of Jewish Organisations said. ”This has no place in 2019, carnival or not. The Jewish community naturally accepts humour is very important in a society, but there are limits that cannot be exceeded.” ....

[T]he Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium called on organisers to condemn the float. 

“At best it is a lack of discernment, especially given the rising context of antisemitism in our country and in the world,” a spokesperson said. “At worst, it is the reproduction of antisemitic caricatures worthy of the Nazi era.“We will contact the organisers and the competent authorities to join our denunciation of these acts for the coming years.”

The European Commission, meanwhile – which is headquartered just 20 miles from Aalst in Brussels – called on the Belgian authorities to take action....'

As reported there, and more fully here,  the group responsible for the antisemitic depictions were unapologetic, and Christoph D’Haese was quoted as saying the group “had no offensive intentions”.

Now, ahead of next year's Aalst carnival, as reported here, the group

'have published 150 caricatures mocking Jews ahead of the 2020 event.The caricatures, some featuring Orthodox Jews with red, hooked noses and golden teeth, were printed on ribbons intended for participants in the annual event, which was added in 2010 to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO....

One caricature shows a red-headed Orthodox Jew with golden teeth and is captioned: “UNESCO, what a joke.”

Hans Knoop, spokesperson for the Forum on Jewish Organizations of Belgium’s Flemish Region, called the 2020 caricatures “pure provocation” and a “manifestation of anti-Semitism.” ...'

And the Burgomeester?  Well, his fame, or rather his infamy, for tolerating, may, for not only tilerating but excusing these antisemitic manifestations, is spreading.  Is it any wonder, Virginia, that on social media he is attracting such robust condemnations as these?

David Singer: Politics Precede Humanity In Brussels Bombings

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

The European Union has been increasingly expressing its growing antagonism towards Israel by

1. imposing specific labelling laws for goods produced by Jews emanating from Judea and Samaria (the West Bank)

2. building structures in Area C of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) without consent or authorisation by Israel  – which exercises full administrative and security control over this area under the Oslo Accords to which the European Union is a signatory.

Positions such as these taken by the European Union – coupled with a growing tide of Jew-hatred in Europe during the past decade – create an atmosphere of hostility towards the Jewish State and can legitimise public expressions of opinion in Europe that would otherwise have been deemed politically incorrect and subjected to widespread criticism.

A case in point seems most likely to have occurred following the tragic events in Brussels on March 22 when 32 people were killed and 340 wounded in two terrorist attacks at Brussels Zaventem airport terminal and the city’s underground metro system.

Belgium’s federal hotline – set up by the Belgian Interior Ministry to take calls after these attacks – has fired an operator who told a caller that Israel does not exist and should be called Palestine instead.

The caller told the operator that he was a volunteer for the city of Antwerp’s Jewish Coordination Committee. Their message was recorded and the full English translated transcript follows:

XXX: Good afternoon, my name is XXX.  I am a volunteer in the Jewish Coordination Committee of Antwerp. We are contacted by persons… we have two persons of the Jewish community that were hurt in the attacks in the airport.

 Crisis Centre: Yes sir.

 XXX: They are prepared to be transported back to Israel. Our volunteers are busy with it and take care of everything but we received information from the hospital that we need special papers from the police that they can be released. Is this correct and to who should we ask that? Can you tell me more about that?

CC: That is effectively... I will take a look. So … they go back to Palestine. 

XXX: Not Palestine, Israel.

CC: Yes, but that was before Palestine, of course. OK.

XXX: Could you repeat that again, please? What is the name?

CC: That … Palestine. 

http://www.behindthename.com/name/zakaria

XXX: Can I get your name, please? 

CC: Of course.  Zakaria. 

XXX: And you know only Palestine? 

CC: Sorry? 

XXX: You don’t know Israel, only Palestine?

CC: I know the Jews went to there, that Palestine received [opvangen] them and that there is a war between Israel and Palestine, of course. And the occupation… that’s what's on the news of course. 

XXX: Can you help me with the question I have, or not? 

CC: Naturally, of course. Thus they go back to Palestine and ask that they could get an attestation. Voila, it is noted. 

XXX: Can I have you name again, I didn’t understand it well.

 CC: Zakaria.

XXX: Zakaria?

CC: That is correct. 

XXX: Zakaria what? What is your last name? 

CC: I am not obliged to give it.

XXX: OK  Thank you very much.

CC: You're welcome. Bye.

Jac Vermeer – CEO of IPG – the company which had the contract to run the hotline for the Belgian Interior Ministry – issued this pathetic apology:

“We wish to apologize to all members of the Jewish community and to the victims and their families in Israel”

No expression of outrage has been issued by the Belgian Interior Ministry or the Belgian Government.

Not a peep from the European Union or European Commission.

The PLO and Hamas must be overjoyed.

Trampling Over A Little Country: Bonkers in Belgium

“Europe is being used in the conflict [against Syria] as a tool in the hands of Israel, the rogue state.”  So declares maverick Belgian politician Laurent Louis, like Britain's George Galloway an obsessive denigrator of Israel, as this speech suggests.

Young Louis is on this footage inveighing against Israel at a pro-Assad rally a few days ago outside the Israeli Embassy in Brussels.  Note the plethora of Hezbollah flags, one of which he grasped.

Shamefully, Louis (who perhaps knows on which side his political bread is buttered, given the increase of Islamic, and Islamic antisemitic, influences in Belgium, a trend described here and here) joined in trampling on the Israeli flag, which afterwards (as seen below) was set alight.



To date, a petition demanding his suspension from Parliament has at the time of writing attracted nearly 3500 signatures. See it (together with the above picture plus others) here

"If You Want To Be Heard, Say It In Belgium..." (includes video)

Yes We Can": Jihadists in Belgium

So said President Obama's man in Brussels, Washington DC lawyer Howard Gutman, on a Belgian late-night talk show some time after his appointment as American ambassador to Belgium as a reward for raising big big bucks for Obama's presidential campaign in 2009.

It seems, as he told his late-night audience, that the affable Mr Gutman and the President have quite a bit in common. But judging from his speech in Brussels Cathedral to mark the anniversary of 9/11, and this one regarding the Palestinian admission to UNESCO, for which Belgium voted, Mr Gutman isn't blessed Mr Obama's gift of oratory.

However, what he said in Belgium on 30 November to a conference of the European Jewish Union, entitled "Fighting Anti-Semitism in Europe: What Is Next?" has certainly been heard loud and clear, and has unleashed a storm of criticism.

In his speech (full text here), which was undoubtedly approved by his political masters back home, Mr Gutman, the son of a Holocaust survivor from Poland and himself a professing Jew, said, inter alia (update: video here):

 'I follow closely and think often about issues of anti-Semitism in Europe. In the past few months, Jacques Brotchi, a Federal Senator and leading neurosurgeon, quit his affiliation with a Brussels university over issues of anti-Semitism and we are in the process of following up on those developments. We have been following up since last week when a Jewish female student was beaten up at a Belgian school by other students spewing racial epithets.

....There is and has long been some amount of anti-Semitism, of hatred and violence against Jews, from a small sector of the population who hate others who may be different or perceived to be different, largely for the sake of hating. Those anti-Semites are people who hate not only Jews, but Muslims, gays, gypsies, and likely any who can be described as minorities or different. That hatred is of course pernicious and it must be combated. We can never take our eye off it or just dismiss it as fringe elements or the work of crazy people, because we have seen in the past how it can foment and grow....

So in some sense, that is the easy part of the analysis.

 Let’s turn to the harder and more complex part.

 What I do see as growing, as gaining much more attention in the newspapers and among politicians and communities, is a different phenomena.... It is the problem within Europe of tension, hatred and sometimes even violence between some members of Muslim communities or Arab immigrant groups and Jews. It is a tension and perhaps hatred largely born of and reflecting the tension between Israel, the Palestinian Territories and neighboring Arab states in the Middle East over the continuing Israeli-Palestinian problem.

.... It is more complex and requiring much more thought and analysis. This second form of what is labeled “growing anti-Semitism” produces strange phenomena and results.

Thus for example, I have been received well by Belgians everywhere in this country. I always get polite applause and sometimes more.

But the longest and loudest ovation I have ever received in Belgium came from the high school with one of the largest percentages of students of Arab heritage. It was in Molenbeek. It consisted of an audience dominated by girls with head scarves and boys named Mohammed, standing and cheering boisterously for a Jewish American....

 These kids were not anti-Semitic as I have ever thought of the term. And I get a similar reaction as I engage with imans, at Iftars, and with Muslims communities throughout Belgium.

 And yet, I know and I hear at the same time that the cheering occurs for this Jew, that within that same school and audience at Molenbeek, among those at the same Iftars, and throughout the Muslim communities that I visit, and indeed throughout Europe, there is significant anger and resentment and, yes, perhaps sometimes hatred and indeed sometimes and all too growing intimidation and violence directed at Jews generally as a result of the continuing tensions between Israel and the Palestinian territories and other Arab neighbors in the Middle East.

 This is a complex problem indeed. It requires its own analysis and solutions. And the analysis I submit is not served simply by lumping the problem with past instances of anti-Jewish beliefs and actions or those that exist today among minority haters under a uniform banner of “anti-Semitism.”....

 But it is the area too – both fortunately and unfortunately -- where the largest part of the solution remains in the hands of government leaders in Israel and the Palestinian territories and Arab countries in the Middle East. It is the area where every new settlement announced in Israel, every rocket shot over a border or suicide bomber on a bus, and every retaliatory military strike exacerbates the problem and provides a setback here in Europe for those fighting hatred and bigotry here in Europe.

Islamist Antisemitism Across The Herring Pond

I said that it is both fortunate and unfortunate that the largest part of the solution for this second type of problem – too often lumped under a general banner of anti-Semitism – is in the hands of Israel, the Palestinians and Arab neighbors in the Middle East. It is fortunate because it means that, unlike traditional hatred of minorities, a path towards improving and resolving it does at least exist. It is crucial for the Middle East – but it is crucial for the Jewish and Arab communities in Europe and for countries around the globe – that Mid-East peace negotiations continue, that settlements abate, and that progress towards a lasting peace be made and then such a peace reached in the Middle East. 

 Were a lasting peace in the Middle East to be reached, were joint and cooperative Israeli-Arab attentions turned to focus instead on such serious, common threats such as Iran, this second type of ethnic tension and bigotry here in Europe – which is clearly growing today – would clearly abate. I can envision the day when it disappears. Peace in the Middle East would indeed equate with a huge reduction of this form of labeled “anti-Semitism” here in Europe.'

At first glance, some of this might appear plausible.  However, it ignores the historical and theocratic legacy of Jew-hatred in the Islamic world, as several commentators (here's one) have been quick to point out.  In what is among the best of the many sound critiques of the Ambassador's position, Elder of Ziyon, observes, inter alia:

'If his theory was correct, that Israeli actions cause Arab Jew-hatred and that diplomacy would reduce it, then the least amount of Jew-hatred in the Arab world must be seen in Egypt and Jordan, who have peace treaties with Israel.

But the exact opposite is the case - those are the states with the most hatred of Jews!'

Read also this excellent take on the subject by Ted Belman,

As for the nexus between antisemitism and anti-Zionism in Belgium, see this video, uploaded earlier this year by the estimable, Belgium-based philosemitismeblog.blogspot.com/ but which has not had the amount of hits it merits:

And with regard to the attack on the young female Belgian Jewish student (a girl of thirteen viciously set upon and racially abused by five girls of Moroccan parentage) mentioned briefly in Howard Gutman's speech, Italian legislator Fiamma Nirenstein (pictured) pulls no punches:

'As chairperson of the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians (ICJP), I would like to express the great concern of our organization for the recent violent attack on a 13-year-old Jewish girl by five Muslim teenagers of Moroccan descent.

 The assault took place on November 18th at an athletics center in Brussels. The Muslim girls beat their Jewish classmate, calling her a "dirty Jew” and telling her "return to your country.” The victim was badly injured and continued to receive threats for days following the attack.

The aggression was publicized by our colleague, Belgian MP Viviane Teitelbaum, member of the ICJP Steering Committee, who denounced the indifference of political leaders and the majority of the media toward the heinous act.

 Over the last few years, we have witnessed the worsening of anti-Semitism towards the Jewish community in Belgium, which has been suffering from the vertical growth of anti-Semitic episodes, including verbal attacks, physical violence, synagogues set on fire, etc. Sadly, this is a well-known worldwide trend that is particularly sharp in Europe, as indicated in various reports on the subject, including a recently released report by the Inquiry Committee on anti-Semitism held by the Italian Parliament.

The attack against the Jewish girl in Belgium is a violent and shocking episode that takes us back to Europe’s darkest days. The local Jewish community, counting 40,000, is angry and exasperated. As the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians, we express our solidarity and support for the Belgian Jewish community. It is time for Belgium to come to terms with the alarming rise in anti-semitic incidents, a fact that can no longer be taken too lightly. We invite our colleagues from all political parties, Jewish and non-Jewish, to raise their voices and undertake relevant parliamentary action to urge the government of Belgium to counter this inconceivable form of hatred.'

Going Out All Over Europe? The Lights Flicker In Brussels

Last Autumn, to the dismay and disgust of the Union of Jewish Students in Belgium (UEJB), as well as of the European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS),  the Free University of Brussels showed a film featuring an incorrigible  antisemite of African origin, French comedian Dieudonne M'Bala M'bala, an admirer of Jean-Marie Le Pen and of Ahmadinejad.

In the film he described Jews as "the biggest swindlers on the planet" and declared "Death will be more comfortable than surrender to these dogs."

The film, 90 minutes in length, was shown during a discussion, open to the public, on freedom of expression focusing on Dieudonne.  Only one panellist, a history professor, spoke out against Dieudonne.

Viviane Teitelbaum, a Brussels legislator present, afterwards condemned the event as glorifying the French antisemite's bigotry and racism.

In a joint statement the UEJB and the EUJS denounced the "partiality" of the university's vice-rector, who moderated proceedings, expressed their shock at the "tense atmosphere of intimidation with regard to the Jews and the State of Israel which characterised the interventions of a large part of the public," and urged the university to pay heed to "the alarming deterioration of the climate on our campus and to fight against the consequences of the importation of the Israeli-Arab conflict".

Other incidents on campus, naturally also denounced by the UEJB, have included the staging of an Israeli military checkpoint there, a Nazi-style student feast, and the publication of an article in a university magazine that bore antisemitic stereotypes and assertions reminiscent of that despicable judeophobic forgery The Protocols of Elders of Zion.

Despite all this, in an interview published last month by the Belgian weekly Le Vif-L’Express, the university's rector denied that his university has become antisemitic, and alleged a "smear campaign"against it.

Feeling that the Free University of Brussels has become "the university of free antisemitism" and noting that many worried Jewish parents now prefer their children to study at the local Catholic university, an honorary professor at the former, internationally renowned neurosurgeon Jacques Brochi, a Jew who is also a Liberal member of the Belgian Senate, has resigned from the board of the university foundation that collects funds for research:

"I deeply deplored the absence of a strong and appropriate reaction from the university authorities to a succession of antisemitic incidents.

I don’t feel at home anymore at ULB." 

Of the situation on campus, he says:

"It is comparable to what is happening in other universities in Europe and elsewhere with the academic boycott of Israel campaigns where anti-Zionism takes the form of antisemitism.

But this is no reason to stay without reaction."

 Last week, in the Belgian Senate, Brotchi and two other members of his party abstained in the vote on a Socialist-initiated resolution calling on the Belgian government to recognise a Palestinian state:

"We abstained because the resolution doesn't condemn the political objective of Hamas which is to destroy the state of Israel."

Read more:
http://www.ejpress.org/article/news/46159
http://www.ejpress.org/article/52125

Antisemitism "Very High" Among Young Muslims in Brussels, Poll Indicates

A study entitled "Jong in Brussel," undertaken by the Jeugdonderzoekplatform (Youth Research Platform) in cooperation with the universities of Ghent, Leuven and the Dutch-speaking VUB, polled 2,837 students in in 32 Dutch-speaking high schools in Brussels.

Here some statements made about Jews to the students, with the percentage of affirmative replies overall:

"Jews want to dominate everything" (31.4% agree)

"Most Jews think they are better than other people" (29.9%)

"When you do business with Jews, you have to be extra alert" (28.6%)

"Jews agitate for war and blame others" (28.4%)

Results of the poll show that half the respondents "can be described as antisemitic which is a very high rate," according to says VUB sociologist Mark Elchardus.

"Worse, [in Brussels] anti-Jewish sentiments are unrelated to the level of education or poor social living conditions.

The antisemitism is theologically inspired. There is a direct link between being Muslim and antisemitic feelings. Catholics, too, are negative toward Jews too, but their sentiments are by far not as strong."

The rate of antisemitism in Flemish-speaking areas of Belgium is markedly lower, it seems.
Source: http://www.demorgen.be/dm/nl/989/Binnenland/article/detail/1263072/2011/05/12/Brusselse-jongeren-vaak-antisemitisch.dhtml
Hat tip: Missing Peace

I guess we can put that in the context of this:

And of this:

So those results are par for the course, really, when we recall that the European report on antisemitism issued in 2003 was suppressed since it showed what politically correct EU bureaucrats didn't want to be revealed - namely, that antisemitism in Europe today is endemic among young Muslims.