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| Two victimes of the massacre at the Jewish museum in Brussels perpetrated by Mehdi Nemmouche (2014) |
Following the terrorist attacks in
Brussels, it has been revealed just how incredibly lax and ill-prepared
Belgium’s security authorities were. Belgian authorities had accurate
advance warnings that terrorists planned to launch attacks at Brussels
airport and in the subway system, yet failed to act. [...]
Nevertheless, the embarrassing details of the
show that passes for security around Jewish institutions is shocking in
its extreme amateurishness. After the Brussels attacks, Brussels Rabbi
Menachem Hadad told Israel’s Army Radio that soldiers, who were
posted outside a synagogue and the city’s Chabad House following the
terrorist attack in Brussels’ Jewish Museum in 2014, told him that for
months, they used to guard the area with no bullets in their rifles. The
English language does not contain a fitting combination of words to
comment on such a spectacle. [...]
Whether common or not, Belgians at any rate
clearly appear to treat hatred of Jews and Israel as perfectly normal
and acceptable. In a video captured by French RTL television of a vigil for the terror victims in Brussels at the Place de La Bourse, a hijab-wearing woman can be seen uninterruptedly replacing an Israeli flag with a Palestinian one and then proceeding to tear up the Israeli flag. Throngs of people surround her, yet no one intervenes. Another
video of a Brussels vigil shows a man stepping on the Israeli flag and
covering it with a Palestinian one, again unhindered by any bystanders.
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| Source: Joods Actueel |
Perhaps this is because their own state
authorities teach Belgians that hating Israel is indeed perfectly normal
and acceptable. In 2013, the Belgian Education Ministry website
featured a virulently anti-Semitic cartoon, which first appeared at one
of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad’s infamous Holocaust
denial conferences in Tehran in 2009, unbelievably, as part of an
exercise for trainee teachers. The cartoon showed a Jewish man impaled
on the fence of a concentration camp next to a man wearing a keffiyeh —
an Arab headress — their limbs arranged in the form of a Nazi swastika.
The caption “never again” appeared above the image of the Jew and the
words “over again!” were written at the Arab’s right foot. In the
exercise, the teachers were asked to analyze the cartoon with one of
three statements: “This is a Palestinian fleeing Jews”; “Jews want the
entire area of Palestine back”; or “Jews call Palestine Israel.” This is
what Belgium tells its teachers to teach Belgian children and then they
feign “shock” when the results play out in the streets.
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| Abou Jahjah |
Similarly, ancient antisemitic tropes and blood libels are featured in the daily Belgian press.
A leading Belgian daily, De Standaard,
claimed in 2013 that Jews “sometimes poisoned Palestinian water wells.”
[Abou Jahjah is a political commentaor @ De Standaard]
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| Cartoon by Zeon |
In Molenbeek itself, also in 2013, a poster for a conference about
Zionism titled “Let’s talk calmly about Zionism,” organized by a local
chapter of the Socialist Party, featured a caricature of a Jew so vile
that it could have been taken straight out of Der Sturmer [Molenbeek fighting anti-Semitism with viciously anti-Semitic cartoon and Molenbeek 'youths' threatened Jews and drove Jewish shops out of business]
The
Belgians are mourning their dead, now that it is too late, but they
contributed energetically themselves toward creating an enabling
atmosphere of hatred, even right in the “jihadi base” of Molenbeek.
On Friday,
antisemitic graffiti was found in a schoolyard in Braine-le-Comte near
Brussels. It featured a swastika, a Star of David and the text: “Juden, Arbeit Macht Frei.”
Even if the Belgian police outside the Jewish
institutions would have bullets for their rifles, it would make no
difference by now. Belgium has already failed on too many levels for it
to recover.
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