Via JTA:
Antwerp’s Jewish community will lose its military protection under a plan by Belgium’s new government to eliminate the presence of soldiers in urban centers.
Approximately 18,000 Jews live in the city in close proximity. Several troops protect its Jewish quarter.
A clause in the government’s plan, which was announced in the coalition agreement signed earlier this week, speaks of a “gradual withdrawal” of the military from urban centers.
“This plan is causing real alarm in the rank-and-file of the Jewish community of Antwerp,” Hans Knoop, a spokesman for the Forum of Jewish Organizations of the Flemish Region of Belgium, or FJO, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview about the plan. “Neither the actual threat nor the government’s own assessment of it have diminished.”
Thousands of troops were deployed in Belgian cities in 2015 following deadly jihadist terrorist attacks in Paris at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine and at a kosher supermarket. Most have been reassigned.
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