Viviane Teitelbaum, Jewish MP (Reformist Movement) in the Brussels Region parliament for the past decade said the following in an interview:
The few Jews in parliament have a universal approach towards fighting racism and discrimination, but that attitude is not reciprocated by the Moroccan or Muslim MPs. War crimes in the Congo, a country with strong links to Belgium, are ignored, while any death in Gaza immediately leads to Parliamentary motions against Israel, accompanied by hate speech against the Jewish community.
Whenever the situation deteriorates between Israel and Palestine, it reflects back on her, as a Jewish MP. Teitelbaum singles out the Socialists and Greens in particular for their violent parliamentary speeches. When she dared say in parliament that Israel was a democracy, she was whistled down from the extreme right to the extreme left, she couldn't even finish a sentence.
When she says she is a Jew with links to Israel, she gets hostile reactions: insults and threats. On the internet her election poster was photoshopped with the head of a pig and the words "Zionism no!".
Whenever a Jewish politician doesn't identify as anti-Israel, he is immediately seen as 'Zionist scum'.
The Brussels Region has suspended the cooperation agreements between Israel and the Brussels Region, and the parliamentary majority (Socialists, Christian-Democrats and Greens) has rejected all of Teitelbaum's efforts to reinstate it. But in the meantime, the Brussels Region has signed cooperation agreements with Algeria, Moscow, Saudi-Arabia, China and Morocco. Not one MP has denounced those agreements. Since the annexation of Crimea, nobody has dared file a motion to suspend the agreements with Moscow. In practice, the Socialists, Christian-Democrats and Greens are boycotting Israel.
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