Belgium: Iraqi man with kippah and knives stopped at entrance to Antwerp synagogue

Via Times of Israel:

A non-Jewish Arab man wearing a kippah and carrying several concealed knives was intercepted by guards as he attempted to enter an Antwerp synagogue.

The 34-year-old Iraqi citizen was questioned by guards when he tried to enter the Romi Goldmuntz Synagoge in the Belgian city on Monday, during the holiday of Shavuot, the Joodse Actueel newspaper reported Tuesday. The man said he spoke neither Hebrew nor Yiddish but insisted he was a member of the city’s Jewish community, the report said, citing police sources.

The guards — members of the community’s Shmira security service — had approached the man with some suspicion because they saw him arrive on a bicycle, a means of transportation that few observant Jews in Antwerp use on Jewish holidays.

The man did speak good Flemish, the report said. The guards called police, who detained the man for questioning.

“He came in wearing a hat and a kippah and pretended to be Jewish, but it was immediately clear to us he did not belong to the Jewish community,” one guard, who was not named, told Joods Actueel.

Attempts to gain access to synagogues, which are restricted to worshipers for security reasons, are common in Antwerp. But such attempts by men carrying knives are extremely rare.

Still, the incident may not have been an attempted attack, Joods Actueel wrote. The knives he carried were small, not much larger than the blade of a pocket knife, and the man seemed not entirely focused, the report said.

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Belgium: Man arrested after attempting to attack a Orthodox Jewish woman in Antwerp

Via KolHaolam:

ANTWERP: A Muslim man was arrested after attempting to attack a Orthodox Jewish woman in Antwerp, Belgium near Belz Shul, suspect arrested.

Belgium: I spoke to the creators of the anti-Semitic carnival float. They’re not sorry.

Via JTA:

I had hoped to introduce some nuance to what was condemned universally as crass racism. Were the creators aware that they were trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes? Did they get carried away in the aesthetics of the float without really considering the content? Was there a level of irony or parody an outsider couldn’t understand?

But rather than offering real explanations, or even expressing any regret for the fallout or trying to acknowledge where it came from, Soleme doubled down. The 52-year-old father of three, who works for the Aalst Police Department, said he thought the float was funny and cited the support of his mayor.

“Mayor Christoph D’Haese totally has our backs, he told us we’ve done nothing wrong,” Soleme told me. D’Haese even told the group that his office would cover any fine imposed by the authorities, Selome said.

D’Haese defended the Vismooil’n group, saying on Tuesday that its float was not intended to offend and that “such things should be allowed at the Aalst Carnaval.” The event was added in 2010 to UNESCO’s list of events that contribute to the “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.”

Filip de Vidts, a technician and the secretary of Vismooil’n, even referred me to D’Haese for a reaction. Treasurer Johan de Plecker, who works for the Education Ministry, did not reply to my request for an interview.

As for Soleme, he has “absolutely no regrets” about participating in the display.

“I think the people who are offended are living in the past, of the Holocaust, but this was about the present,” he said. “There was never any intention to insult anyone. It was a celebration of humor.”

The Jewish theme, he said, was “because we weren’t sure we’d be doing a 2020 tour [because of rising costs]. So that would mean we’d be taking a sabbatical, and it went on from there.”

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Belgium: Antisemitic carnival float had puppets of smiling Jews, sacks of money and a rat

Via Independent:

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.”

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Belgium: Kosher slaughter ends in northern Belgium, threatening supplies to Europe

Via Times of Israel:

As the year 2018 came to a close Monday, it brought with it an end to kosher slaughter in the northern Flanders region of Belgium, home to half of the country’s Jewish population and a major supplier of meat for European Jewish communities.

In June 2017, the parliament in the Flemish region, one of the five sectors that make up the country, unanimously passed a resolution banning ritual slaughter without stunning.

The decision followed a similar one approved in May 2017 by the Walloon Parliament in the south, Belgium’s largest region. Both measures take effect in 2019. 

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Belgium: Vandals damage Holocaust memorial in Ghent

Via JNS:

Vandals damage a Holocaust memorial in the Belgian city of Ghent on the eve of a Kristallnacht commemoration. 

Vandals damaged a Holocaust memorial in the Belgian city of Ghent, some 50 kilometers west of Brussels, on the eve of a Kristallnacht (“Night of the Broken Glass”) commemoration.

The so-called Michaël Lustig monument, in the shape of a dreidel, is located at the confluence of a major canal. It was ripped off its foundation and left on its side.

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Belgium: Jewish woman reportedly threatened with firearm outside her home

Via Times of Israel:

A Jewish woman whose family has endured months of anti-Semitic intimidation in Belgium said a man pointed a gun at her outside her home.

The woman, identified in the Belgian media only as Nicole, told the SudPresse media group that the incident happened on Oct. 9 outside their home in Marchienne-au-Pont, a suburb of Charleroi, 30 miles south of Brussels, the media group’s report from Friday said.

...

Recounting the firearm incident, Nicole told SudPresse: “We stopped at a red light in front of a hair salon near our street. There was a bearded individual there whom I recognised because he verbally assaulted me two weeks ago. He turned to us. He first looked at my husband and then at me, saying: ‘I’m going to put a bullet in your head’.” Then he took out a gun and pointed it in her direction, Nicole said.

Earlier this year, the La Meuse regional daily published an article about the multiple cases of harassment directed at the couple. They had been living for over two years in Marchienne-au-Pont without incident, according to the report.

But this summer, the report said, she and her family have been targeted in a campaign of harassment that has featured written death threats stuffed into their mailbox and the scrawling of anti-Semitic graffiti on their front door.

“We are too afraid to leave our home since this started,” Nicole, a native of Chile, told the newspaper. “Several people discovered we’re Jewish and ever since we’ve been getting death threats.” One letter addressed to Nicole called her a “dirty whore” and other insults.

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Belgian funded PA school still named after terrorist mass murderer

Via Palestinian Media Watch:

PA ignores Belgian demands to change name, yet Belgian funding of the PA continues unabated By Maurice Hirsch, Adv. and Itamar Marcus

on The Palestinian school built with Belgian funding is still named after terrorist mass murderer, Dalal Mughrabi, who led the 1978 bus hijacking and murder of 37 Israelis including 12 children.

On Sept. 27, 2017, Palestinian Media Watch released a report documenting 31 Palestinian Authority schools named after terrorists, one of which PMW is certain was built by the Belgium government.

Text on plaque: "Through a fund from the Government of the Kingdom of Belgium and through the Belgian Development Agency BTC, constructed and furnished, Beit Awaa Basic Girls School"[Facebook page of Dalal Mughrabi Elementary School, (accessed Sept. 18, 2017)

Shortly after PMW's original report was published, Belgian authorities condemned the naming of the school built with its funding after the terrorist and announced it "will not allow itself to be associated with the names of terrorists in any way." [The Algemeiner, Oct. 7, 2017]  

PMW has now discovered that the PA has defied Belgium, and the school continues to be named Martyr Dalal Mughrabi Elementary School. PMW has confirmed this after the official PA daily published a story announcing the "launch of activities of the outstanding athletic clubs," hosted by none other than the Dalal Mughrabi School in Southern Hebron.  

PMW examined the pictures from the event and noted that the same plaque thanking Belgium for funding the school named after the terrorist mass murderer can be seen in the pictures from the recent event.

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Belgium: "Nude Belgian Model in Israel” story worse than you think

Background:
Belgian model chooses only to offend Jews, not Muslims, at nude photo shoot facing Western Wall

Via Israelly Cool:

You probably already read about Marisa Papen, the Belgian model who posed naked for a photograph overlooking the Western Wall. Tellingly, the photo does not include the Dome of the Rock and the Temple Mount – although she claims it has nothing to do with being worried about the potential repercussions.(…)  

In any event, it turns out this enterprise is even more offensive than first thought. Israellycool reader David contacted Frank Rose, the agent behind the photo shoot, who sent him the portfolio of Papen’s photos from Israel, including some descriptions. For a start, the Western Wall photo is not the only photo mocking Judaism. There is also this one: (…)  

Again, not a chance these “trailblazers” would dare take a photo of a naked man reading from the Quran.

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Oxfam Belgium also uses sexual imagery to bash Israel

Belgium: Model chooses only to offend Jews, not Muslims, at nude photo shoot facing Western Wall

Via Elder of Ziyon:

Marisa Papen is an artist whose entire idea of art is to take off her clothes and get photographed around the world. When she visited Israel, however, she decided to push the envelope - and to pose nude in front of the Western Wall. She pre-emptively insulted anyone who would dare to be upset:

The Wall of Shame 

First of all, ‘don’t judge a book by its title’…  

This purely implies the shame you, dear reader, (perhaps) will project on me because I have done something so disrespectful, I should burn in hell. I know my mailbox is about to fill up with threats and angriness again - to all the people typing down their furiosity right now, save your energy. I don’t even open them. After my escapades in Egypt, I knew that I wanted to push the bounderies of regilion and politics even further. Breaking down the walls that have been build to keep all our wandering souls on this planet somehow under control.  

With other words, showing my personal religion in a world where freedom is becoming a very luxurious thing.

(…) Notice, however, that the photo was carefully composed so as to only show the Western Wall, not the Dome of the Rock (which would be to the left) or the Al Aqsa Mosque (cropped out of the right.) Papen and her photographer [Mathias Lambrecht] are careful to only insult Jews. Because they know that if the photo would be a little more expansive and include Muslim holy places, then she wouldn't only get angry emails that she can casually dismiss, but actual death threats.

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Via Times of Israel:  The picture, along with others from the visit to Israel, are on display in the Frank Rose Gallery in Knokke, Belgium, in an exhibit titled “Road to Liberation.”

Belgium: “Would you mind removing your kippa for security reasons?”, rabbi told in Brussels

Via The Jerusalem Post (Axel Benjamin):

“Would you mind removing your kippa for security reasons?” The one sentence that sums up the malaise at the heart of Europe.

“You have to hear this”, said our usually un-flappable and very level-headed chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin. So, when he said that, we all knew something significant was about to be said. But even now, as I write this, it seems so ludicrous to repeat out loud, particularly considering the source it came from.

The more I think about it about it, the more it speaks volumes and underlines how deep the malaise currently affecting European political and cultural thought goes. You will have to wait a bit longer for the punchline, first let’s put it into context: At the end of last week, we at the European Jewish Association and our partners at Europe Israel Public Affairs, the European Jewish Community Centre and European Coalition for Israel twinned European Parliamentarians, EU Institution policy heads and Jerusalem’s brightest and best high-tech entrepreneurs and venture partners for the second of our annual High Tech conferences in the European Parliament. The conference was organized by the Jerusalem Development Authority and the Israeli Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage. Oscar bit done, now the story. (…)

“Would you mind removing your kippa for security reasons?” asked the Belgian policeman to Margolin. Boom. Back to earth with a bump.

Welcome to Brussels in 2018. Where perceived security and provocation from the forces of law and order stems from the act of wearing a kippa, instead of those who find it an affront in the first place.

This logic implies that a girl could be asked to not wear a skirt because she might provoke a rapist, or that a priest should remove his collar in case someone from ISIS takes offence at the ‘infidel’. Is this really what passes as maintaining security in Brussels these days? 

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Belgium: Rapper with anti-Semitic lyrics shut down during public radio appearance

Via JTA:

A Belgian public radio station kicked out of its studio a rapper who on air inveighed against Israel and “Zionists” while introducing a song whose lyrics speak of “money-loving Jews running after each cent.”

The incident occurred last month at the Antwerp studio of a department of the VRT public broadcaster during an interview with Bissy Owa, an up-and-coming performer who is Muslim, about his recently released song titled “Money till the Death,” the Joods Actueel news website reported Wednesday.

The VRT studio muted Owa’s microphone after he said during a live interview: “F**k the Zionists, revolution, Israel must go, free Palestine.”

The song, which begins with the expletive about Zionists, shows him dancing while wearing a black hat and fake side-locks and singing about Jewish greed. He also says “I can’t hang with a Jew.”

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Belgium: Anti-Semitic caricature removed from textbook

Background: Belgium: Antisemitic Latuff cartoon published in textbook

Via Ynet:

Two months after Ynet first made public a Belgian textbook contained a caricature that could be construed as anti-Semitic, the country's Education Ministry announced Thursday that the upcoming edition of the book will be published without the offensive drawing.

A letter forwarded by Belgian Education Minister Hilde Crevits Thursday to attorney Yifa Segal, director of the International Legal Forum—who first exposed the story—notified the lawyer that after a probe and a talk with the book's publisher, the caricature will be removed starting with the book's next edition.

The minister added that, "One of the education system's goals is to bring up the younger generation to become respectable, informed citizens" and that the Flemish government only set a bar on academic achievement, leaving selection of appropriate books to each school.

The matter initially came to light in late March, when the International Legal Forum NGO was informed by parents from Bruges of a geography textbook intended for 15 year olds and approved by the country's education system.

The chapter in which the caricature appeared dealt with purported inequality in water distribution between Israelis and Palestinians residing in the West Bank. The caricature showed an overweight Jew with traditional Jewish payos (or sidelocks) asleep in a bathtub filled with water, contrasted with an old Palestinian woman with an empty water bucket.

The cartoon—which may have come from the international human rights group itself—carried a caption that read, "Amnesty International: Israel is denying Palestinians access to adequate water … While settlers enjoy lush lawns and swimming pools!"

Attorney Segal, who is deeply involved in the international struggle against the worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, was astounded by a copy of the textbook she obtained and consequently sent a scathing letter to the Belgian education minister demanding the anti-Semitic caricature be removed summarily. 

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Belgium: Pro-Palestinian activists place 9,000 shoes on Brussels square

Interestingly, as CNN pointed out in 2013: The Roma, a thousand years of discrimination continues in Europe. The European Parliament lamented in 2015 that Roma remain Europe's 'most discriminated and vulnerable ethnic group'. But European, who are so interested in the Palestinians, show little or no compassion for the Roma...

Via JTA:

Pro-Palestinian activists placed 4,500 pairs of shoes outside the meeting place in Brussels of European Union foreign ministers to protest Palestinian deaths since 2008.

The protest action, organized by the Avaaz group, covered Jean Rey Square with shoes, donated by citizens across Europe over the last week ahead of the Council of the European Union meeting in Brussels Monday. The organizers placed a banner reading “Palestinian lives matter” along the middle section of a Palestinian flag.

Some 4,500 people, including many dozens of Israelis, died in hostilities between Israel and Palestinians since 2008. The Avaaz group said its initiative was a “growing call for EU governments to protect Palestinian lives by reining in Israel’s government violence.”

Critics of the initiative, including Nicole Seekles, a supporter of Israel from the Netherlands, wrote on Facebook that the display was inappropriately evocative of the heaps of shoes on display at the Nazi former death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland.

Others noted that the protest included no mention of the nearly 4,000 Palestinians who have died in the Syrian civil war that erupted in 2011, mostly at the hands of the forces of Bashar Assad in the government’s war on Sunni Muslims.

Belgium: Brussels chief rabbi declines to wear kippa publicly, citing security concerns

Via The Times of Israel:

Amid reports of widespread fear among Belgian Jews of being attacked by anti-Semites, the chief rabbi of Brussels and other Jews declined over security concerns a public broadcaster’s request to film them walking on the street while wearing a kippa. The RTBF broadcaster reported Thursday it wanted to film Chief Rabbi Albert Guigui, among other rabbis, wearing a kippa for a program about anti-Semitism.

But Guigui declined, telling the channel he has stopped visibly wearing a kippa in 2001 following an anti-Semitic assault on his person. In December of that year, Guigui was attacked by a group of Arabic speaking youths.

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Read also:
Brussels and Barcelona chief rabbis say there is no future for Jews in Europe

Belgium: Academic equates Israel with a parasite infestation of Palestine

Via Philosémitisme blog:

Eric David is a professor at the Free University of Brussels (Université Libre de Bruxelles, ULB) - and needless to say a much respected academic, so much so that he received the Peace Prize awarded by the Belgian Auschwitz Foundation... You just couldn't make this up, could you? His long-standing hostility towards Israel is unfailing, a sentiment shared by others at the university. He wrote a long piece about Israel on a blog run by Pierre Piccinin da Prata, a Belgian teacher, who once complained about the Zionist mafia ("Once again I was cowardly attacked by the Zionist mafia, but I'm not afraid. One day fear will change sides and they will be brought to account").

This is what Eric David wrote (Google translation):

"The history of Palestine resembles the parasitic phenomenon in which an individual colonizes an animal or a plant and feeds on it at its expense. In the case of Palestine, the phenomenon begins with World War I and what is named the Sykes-Picot Accords, two diplomats who, on behalf of the UK and France respectively, divided their areas of influence in the Middle East on the remains of the Ottoman Empire which was then the ally of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The agreement was signed, in reality, on May 16th, 1916, by Paul Cambon, French Ambassador in London, and Sir Edward Gray, Secretary of State.  In this context, the first stage of parasitism in Palestine is the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, in which Lord Balfour wrote to Lord Rothschild, acting on behalf of the Political Committee of the Zionist Organization: (...)  

The fifth stage of the parasitic enterprise is the construction by Israel from 2002 of a wall that separates the West Bank from Israel but which, by its route, includes parts of Palestinian territory, prevents Palestinians from circulating in their own country. territory, deprives them of land and impedes their access to fields, health services, schools, water, a situation condemned almost unanimously by the ICJ in its advisory opinion of 9 July 2004 (ICJ, loc cit., § 163).  

The 6th stage of the parasitic enterprise - which is less of a "phase" than a consequence of the pathology of the Israeli parasitosis - lies in the armed operations carried out by Israel against the Gaza Strip, particularly the operations "Cast Lead" in 2008-2009 and "Protective Edge" in 2014, operations in response to rocket fire from Gaza and totally disproportionate as they killed and injured hundreds of Palestinian civilians. (...)  

The Israeli parasite has thus settled in the Palestinian body and it is part of it just as the millions of yeasts, parasites and bacteria that occupy the human body! "

Read the full article (in French) by Eric David @ The Courrier du Maghreb et l'Orient

Belgium: Israel's ambassador turns table on Brussels' Gaza reprimand

Via Ynet News:

After being lashed by Belgium and Luxembourg over Israeli policies and its 'disproportionate' use of force during latest wave of unrest, Ambassador Simona Frenkel refuses ‘to listen with a bowed head', tells top diplomats, 'your one-sided positions don’t contribute to peace.'

Israel's Ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg Simona Frenkel chastised representatives of the two countries’ foreign ministries Wednesday after being summoned to be reprimanded herself following Monday's deadly clashes between the IDF and some 40,000 Gazan protestors. “It seems that the Belgian Foreign Ministry belongs to a school of thought according to which when an ambassador is summoned for a conversation or a reprimand, he is supposed to behave like a child who has misbehaved, to listen with a bowed head and not to respond,” Frenkel wrote in a report sent to the Foreign Ministry.

“I responded and fired back against Belgium: Your one-sided positions do not contribute to peace.” Frenkel was first invited to a meeting with Deputy Director-General of the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Anick Van Calster, who recently visited Israel.

Van Calster opened by saying that she had been instructed by Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders to invite Frenkel in order to clarify the Belgian position, to voice objections to events that occurred on Monday on the Gaza border and to protest against what was described as a “disproportionate” use of force.

Calster also expressed anger over statements made by Frenkel during an interview with the country’s RTBF radio station, in which she described those killed in Gaza during the wave of unrest as terrorists. “Regarding the independent investigation committee: There has never been an investigation committee that was independent when it comes to our affairs. All of them were political, where there is an automatic majority of people against Israel,” she replied. (...)

“Moreover, Belgium is the last to claim an independent investigation committee since its Prime Minister Charles Michel has determined even before the committee has been established that Israel had to be punished, You have already predetermined the outcome,” Frenkel argued.

She also defended her comments on the radio, drawing Van Calster’s attention to the fact that doubts had already been cast on whether a Gazan baby had in fact been killed by Israeli forces during the protests.

“You raised an outcry because I described them all as terrorists, but this morning we now know that regarding the 8 month old baby who was killed and allegedly hit by the IDF, even the journalists in Gaza are moderating their positions and are saying that she may have already been dying beforehand and was deliberately brought to the fence,” Frenkel noted, before offering what she described as “proof” that the Hamas terror group was responsible for the violent protests. 

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Belgium: Saudi-financed mosques teach hatred of Jews, gays

Via France24:

Teaching manuals in Gulf Arab-financed mosques in Belgium promote anti-semitic stereotypes of Jews and call for the persecution of homosexuals, according to a leaked Belgian intelligence report.

The texts used in mosques including the Brussels Grand Mosque call for gays to be stoned to death or thrown off buildings and describe Jews as "evil", the report by the OCAM national terrorism monitoring centre said.

The writings, which are used to train preachers and theology professors, were "inspired mainly by classical Islamic law from the Middle Ages," OCAM said in a copy of the report obtained by AFP on Friday.

They have "problematic content in terms of radicalism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism," the OCAM report said.

Belgian lawmakers say they will discuss the report next week. 

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Belgium: Antisemitic and jihad textbooks at the heart of imams training in Brussels

This has been known for many years, but somehow the numerous human rights NGOs operating in Belgium are not aware of this type of antisemitic activities going on quite openly - or maybe they are just not interested.

Via The European Jewish Press:

BRUSSELS - Antisemitic manuals advocating armed jihad are included in the curriculum of the training of future imams and teachers at the Grand Mosque in Brussels located a few hundred meters from the European Union headquarters, reveals a confidential report from OCAM, the governmental coordinating unit for threat analysis in Belgium.  

According to the report, revealed by Belgian daily La Libre and RTL TV channel, many of these manuals are freely available in Brussels and elsewhere.  

The OCAM document mentions the fact that "the teaching of the Muslim religion of the Arab section of the Islamic and Cultural Center of Belgium, the name of the Brussels Grand Mosque, "is in no way adapted to the Belgian or European reference framework. They contain Salafist ideas and doctrines that encourage the rejection of any different ideas and fundamental constitutional rights and freedoms".  

Moreover, the OCAM insists on the fact that "many mosques and Islamic centers in Belgium still have in their libraries and as part of their training activities textbooks and other documents presenting a problematic content in terms of radicalism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism."

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Hungary: Armed guards protect Jewish restaurants in France and Belgium but not in Budapest

Frank Furedi @ Spiked:

[...] If you listened only to Western media, you would think Hungary had become the heartland of fascism. In numerous media outlets it was darkly suggested that the re-election of Orban would constitute a threat akin to Hitler gaining power in the 1930s. Lurid headlines warned of the imminent collapse of Hungary into authoritarian rule. Canadian Michael Ignatieff, the president and rector of Budapest’s Western-financed Central European University (CEU), warned that the election would determine whether ‘Hungary consolidates itself as a democracy or whether it aligns with Putin and the ascendant authoritarians of the 21st century’.

When I talk to a couple of Western students from the CEU, it is clear that they believe Ignatieff’s warning. They warn me about the unprecedented prevalence of anti-Jewish sentiment in Budapest. They don’t believe me when I point out that if you understand Hungarian, you will find that such sentiments are probably weaker in Budapest than they are in Paris or many other Western European cities. When I tell them that I have seen armed guards protecting Jewish restaurants in France and Belgium but not in Budapest, they look uncomfortable and change the subject.

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