introduction

In early December 2001 the chief rabbi of Brussels, Albert Guigui, was assaulted in the street by a group of youngsters and insulted in Arabic. Surprisingly, perhaps, the attack prompted no expressions of outrage or a wave of solidarity among politicians or in the media, as it might have done had the rabbi been attacked by far right militants. This lack of sympathy may be explained by the fact that the act was perpetrated by immigrants from the Maghreb, themselves potential victims of exclusion and racism, and not by traditional antisemites.

The attack on the chief rabbi was one in a series of anti-Jewish incidents that indicates a clear rise in antisemitism in Belgium. In a press release of 5 December, the Consistoire central israélite de Belgique expressed its “utter horror and concern in the face of such racist and antisemitic acts which, unfortunately, are becoming more and more frequent.” Pinpointing the role of the media, it stressed the link between unbalanced attacks on Israel and antisemitic acts: “It is becoming obvious that the hate campaign led by the media … can only encourage this antisemitic violence.”

Indeed, since the outbreak of the second intifada articles, commentaries, testimonies and photographs have appeared daily. Israel is portrayed by the Belgian media, notably Le Soir, the most widely circulated French-language newspaper in Belgium, as well as by Vif l’Express, its weekly supplement, as solely responsible for the violence which has shaken the Middle East for almost two years. Frequently, in their forum pages and in letters to the editor, Israelis are equated with Nazis and in more extreme publications antisemitic motifs appear in anti-Israel propaganda.

It should be noted that focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Belgian public discourse is relatively new. In his study The Image of the Jews and Judaism in Belgium History Books,”¹ Maurice Krajzman showed that the destruction of European Jewry and the struggle to establish a Jewish homeland were given scant attention in the postwar Belgian press. This lacuna included discussion of the Holocaust itself as well as the question of compensation for survivors. The popular French-language weekly of the postwar period Pourquoi Pas?, for example, showed no special interest in the “Jewish-Arab conflict in the Holy Land.” Rare articles on the subject that did appear expressed little compassion for the Jews, survivors of the Holocaust. On the other hand, Krajzman notes frequent allusions bordering on the most banal antisemitism.

Between 1945 and 1948, the Belgium political establishment aligned itself with British policy in Palestine, the Jewish national struggle finding support only among Communists. Catholic Belgian society, which was traditionally hostile toward Zionism, expressed open concern about the “return of the Jews to Judea.” The Socialist Party’s commitment to the Jewish cause was tempered by the ambivalence of its charismatic leader and prime minister Paul-Henri Spaak, an anglophile who feared ruining Belgium’s excellent trade relations with the Arab world. During the UN partition vote on Palestine he voted only at the last minute in favor of the plan.

During Israel’s war of independence, Jews provided with arms supplies by Eastern bloc countries fought against troops equipped by the West, particularly Belgium. Indeed, in 1948, 49 percent of exports of Fabrique Nationale, the well-known Belgian gunsmiths” went to Arab countries involved in the conflict.² However, it would be incorrect to speak of Belgian anti-Zionism at that time; while official Belgian policy toward the Jewish cause might be labeled indifferent or cautious, the majority of Belgian citizens were largely in favor of the Zionist cause.³

It was only in the 1980s with the maturing of the New Left (May 1968) ideology’ and the Lebanon war that the Palestinian cause began to receive attention in the Belgian media and in public opinion, manifested in increasing antagonism toward Israel among various ideological streams. This trend, which came to a head at the beginning of the millennium, was triggered by the outbreak of the second intifada.

One of the chief concerns of Belgian Jews today – and a principal focus of this article – is the fact that criticism of Israel often incorporates negative Jewish stereotypes and antisemitic insinuations, and that supposedly objective criticism of Israel may be rooted in antisemitism. This suspicion, shared by many Jews in Western Europe in particular, was reinforced by events at the UN World Conference against Racism in Durban, September 2001. Denunciation of Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians became a pretext for attacking Jews in the Diaspora, who found themselves in the position of being the main “defendant.” Moreover, so-called anti-Zionist caricatures, which were widely disseminated during the conference, were directly inspired by Nazi illustrations, notably those of Der Stürmer.

The aim of this article is to analyze the exploitation of the Holocaust, especially the equation of Israel with Nazi Germany, in anti-Israeli propaganda in Belgium. It will also discuss the usage of classical antisemitic motifs in anti-Israel propaganda and assess the relation between antisemitism and anti-Zionism in the publications of opposing ideological positions.

The burden of the Shoah – “Israelis as

successors of the Nazis”

The Holocaust era, in contrast to the immediate postwar era, is today no longer considered a taboo subject but an established fact, corroborated by numerous scientific studies, museums, archives, movies and survivors’ testimonies. It has been incorporated as an educational and cultural theme in European institutions. Concomitantly, however, there has been a clear tendency in Europe in general and in Belgium in particular to relieve the burden of guilt toward the Jews by equating Israelis with Nazis. In this respect, it is worthwhile noting the words of Simon-Pierre Nothomb, a descendant of one of the leading Catholic families in Belgium, in the daily Brussels-based Le Soir:

How can such a talented and perceptive people as the Jews, who experienced so many atrocities and pain in flesh, blood and spirit, accept today that its government and army inflict upon others who are not guilty of anything, precisely what they suffered themselves? … The landscape of the West Bank is like a hallucination. Like Poland during its dark years; it is dotted with concentration camps … The Gaza Strip is an overpopulated prison. You should visit it, you will revise the history of the Warsaw ghetto … As in 1941 Warsaw, the local authorities are ordered to hand over their subjects forthwith, according to lists compiled by the occupying authorities.⁴

Another notable example of the equation between Israel and Nazi Germany was the Contre-pied affair. Contre-pied is an educational magazine, distributed free-of-charge in 175,000 copies through Democracy or Barbary, a pedagogic think-tank created in 1995 by the Ministry of Education of the francophone Belgian community (Communauté Française Wallonie-Bruxelles) to fight racism and antisemitism. This think-tank, which does irreproachable work on the Shoah, published in December 2001 a stinging attack on Israel. Accordingly, Israel was solely responsible for the violence that has been tearing the Middle East apart. While not a single word was said on the peace proposals of the Rabin, Peres or Barak governments, the situation of the Palestinians in Gaza was compared to that of the Jews during the Nazi occupation. When the Jewish community learnt of the pamphlet a scandal ensued, leading the minister, President of the Communauté Française Hervé Hasquin, to cancel its contract with the editors of Contre-pied. Democracy or Barbary, for its part, simply reiterated that it “had been founded to raise awareness of the Shoah.”

The idea of the Jews being capable of committing genocide eases a great many consciences; they have become executioners of the worst kind, like the Nazis. The French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut underlines this trend which may be traced from 1982 onwards. He wrote of those who find joy, shameful joy (Shadenfreude) in attacking the Jews through Israel: “What visible relief in the analogies complacently drawn between the Star of David and the swastika, between Beirut and the Warsaw ghetto.”

The projection of Israel as a criminal state as a means of alleviating the burden of guilt from World War II is evident in nations where nationalist motives spurred a large part of the local political or religious élite to become Nazi collaborators. This was true of countries such as Croatia and Slovakia, but also of regions such as Flanders. While it is important to underline that there was indeed a “Flanders resistance” (the grandfather of Patrick Dewael, current Flemish prime minister, had been a member of the resistance and died in a concentration camp),⁵ the phenomenon of collaboration was far more prevalent in the north than in the south of the country. It was in Flanders, and not in Wallonia or in Brussels, that the communal authorities rushed to execute the measures imposed by the occupying forces, and even reinforced them at times.⁶ In May 2001, Interior Minister Johan Sauwens, a member of the main Flemish nationalist party Volksunie (VU) was forced to resign after he had participated in a reunion of former Flemish SS men.

Suppression of the past has led to a tendency in certain parts of Flanders to trivialize both collaboration and the Holocaust, and, at the same time, to denounce Israel and particularly its prime minister for crimes against humanity. VU, which has now split in to the VU-ID and Spirit, has traditionally supported an amnesty for Nazi collaborators and opposed Israel. VU members of parliament regularly call for an anti-Israel campaign. On 19 February 2002, during a debate in the federal Chamber of Representatives, VU-ID deputy VU Ferdy Willems called for a national boycott of Israeli products, because, he alleged, Israel was a racist country.⁷

Another aspect of the linkage between criticism of Israel and antisemitism is the insinuation that the origins of Israel’s cruelty and its alleged racism may be found in Judaism. The following text, from the highly popular Flemish P-Magazine,⁸ illustrates this trend. It contains all the ingredients of the “new antisemitism,” and justifies hatred of Jews in the name of human rights and anti-racism.

I do not like the shape of the country of Israel. To me, its shape is far too thin and far too long. It makes me think of a worm [tenia]. I do not like Israel’s policies. To me, they are far too bloody and have no respect for the native population. I do not like the Jewish religion in the country of Israel. To me, this religion is too arrogant and parasitic … I am not antisemitic. Palestinians are Semites. Israel is systematically assassinating Semites … Slowly but surely, Europe is liberating itself from the penitence, which has been inflicted on it since World War II. Indeed, it is bizarre that it has taken so long for the world to realize that one genocide does not justify another.

Certain Christian circles, too, have taken advantage of the “godsend” that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict represents in their eyes. Their embrace of a profound and ancient opposition to Judaism might explain the carte blanche given to Libre Belgique on 22 January 2002, when the abbot of Scourmont de Chimay accused Israel of “slow genocide”:

Another dramatic situation is underway. In the course of the last few months, the slow genocide of the Palestinian people has accelerated in an astounding manner. Every attack, the crazy helplessness of a suicide commando against the Israelis becomes the pretext for a massive response.

Attacks on Israel, as these texts demonstrate, provide an outlet for illicit feelings, in the name of progress. To accuse Jews of racism is intentional: once the Jews are considered racists, antisemitism is rid of its racist component and transformed into a doctrine of enlightenment. As the French philosopher Joseph Gabel wrote in 1987: “Anti-racist feelings among the public, which are a healthy reaction to the atrocious horrors of Hitlerite racism, are counteracted by tendencies toward open anti-Zionism, often coupled with unavowed antisemitism.”⁹

The Extreme Left: Anti-Zionism as a Function of Anti-Americanism and Anti-capitalism

In his study on the almost Manichaean attitude of the extreme left in Western Europe toward Israel, Pierre-André Taguieff uses the term judeophobia, coined by Pinsker. According to Taguieff, Israel is perceived not like other states, but as the epitome of evil without which the world would be far better off. This approach may be found in the publications of almost all leftist ideological trends and groups, such as the neo-Christian humanitarian movements, a large proportion of the “new anti-imperialists” and other neo-anti-globalization groups, as well as amongst “anarcho-Trotskyists,” pacifists and Communists. Old rhetoric such as “anti-racist,” “anti-imperialist” and “anti-fascist” is being revived to enable the construction of an utterly diabolical figure, a composite of Satan: the United States/Israel/ the Western world.

One can observe a new, grand, populist vision of worldwide expansion: the “rich” baddies against the “poor” goodies. From this one can conclude that the enemies of the “Zionists” are simultaneously the enemies of the “Americans,” and that these enemies are merely “victims,” who are in a state of legitimate revolt. Islamism is the anti-capitalism of the enlightened, who have been metamorphosed into fanatics due to their resentment against the West (a category which includes the Zionist entity).The stereotype of the “rich Jew” is therefore recycled, causing one to overlook plutocratic circles, which, particularly in the Arab-Muslim world, finance the Islamist networks and terrorist organizations.¹⁰

Indeed, antisemitic stereotypes such as the avaricious Jew, and the capitalist and the corrupt Jew are barely disguised in the anti-Israel propaganda of the extreme left. The concept of a world Jewish conspiracy appears as American-Israeli imperialism or Zionist imperialism. A linkage is made between America, Israel and “globalizing” capitalism.

The speech made by Belgian humanitarian guru Pierre Galand, president of the Forum des Peuples, member of the Belgian sector of the Amis du Monde Diplomatique of the Belgo-Palestinian Association and professor of the Free University of Brussels, illustrates this attitude. The text, which was used in propaganda attacks against Israel in Durban, was disseminated through the website of the Maoist Parti du Travail de Belgique (Workers Party of Belgium). By relating to the evils of capitalism alongside Israel’s alleged deeds, an inevitable link is created based on leftist stereotypes:

The historical dialogue organized by the UN on racism has turned into a confrontational and door-slamming event, because the North officially refutes what is evident: Blacks, Indians and so many “minorities” are still suffering the agonies of colonialism … Never, have the rich of the North agreed to provide the 1 percent of their GDP for the development of the South … Never has there been an honest settling of the rates of raw materials of Southern provenance. In this context ... Palestine has become the new Vietnam, the symbol of the unjust war. A people deprived of its rights, just like the Vietnamese of 50 years ago, the Palestinians represent in the eyes of a growing number of peoples, citizens movements, youth and the resistant South, a heroic people, who defend their basis rights and above all their dignity, in the face of an aggressive Israel which the West fails to firmly condemn.¹¹

With Israel and capitalism subtly equated in evil, the myth of the capitalistic Jew, the icon of French 19th century antisemitism, is resurrected. The roots of this antisemitic attitude may be found in the writings of the utopian Socialist Charles Fourier and of Alphonse Toussenel, author of The Jews, Kings of Our Times: “I define the name of the despised Jew, any type of trafficker, any non-productive parasite,who lives from somebody else’s substance and work.”¹²

The ritual murder myth – the allegation that the Jews killed innocent Christian children – has also penetrated anti-Zionist propaganda. One of the oldest antisemitic allegations, it brought about the destruction of many Jewish communities; even after World War II this accusation led to the pogrom in Kielce, Poland, in 1946. Lately, this myth, which originated in the Christian word, has been transplanted to the Arab world where it is exploited in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict (see Arab Countries). A version of the myth disseminated by the Palestinians is the accusation of organ theft. On 24 December 2001, a date that is undoubtedly not accidental, the official paper of the Palestinian Authority accused the Israelis of using Palestinian body parts “Clear signs indicate that the occupying authorities steal parts of martyrs’ corpses during the time they hold them, so that they can use them in Israeli hospitals, particularly for Israeli patients who need transplants.”¹³ On 16 January 2002, “photographs,” allegedly of the dissected corpses of three children, were disseminated via the Internet. Although clearly rigged and unverified, the information was immediately relayed by the majority of sections of the main anti-globalization press agency Indymedi, including on 17 January, Indymedia Belgium, which is particularly prone to primitive antisemitic attacks. The agency’s comment bore a religious overtone: “If this is true, then may God bless Israel.”

Conclusion: anti-Zionism as a cultural code

Belgium has not, in the course of several months, become an antisemitic country that must be denounced to the rest of the world. The Jews in Belgium do not suffer discrimination. It is, however, a matter of concern for them to observe a real rise in antisemitism in the country.

As demonstrated above, antisemitism emanates both from Catholic circles and the extreme left, as well as from a large part of the extreme right. These sectors have taken advantage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to release the antisemitic world from its longstanding burden of guilt of the Shoah, which not only seems to have lost its power to curb antisemitic passions, but actually appears to intensify them. “For the European progressives,” stresses Alain Finkielkraut, “we are the dregs of the earth … They equate the Jewish State to a Nazi state. For them, we [the Jews] cannot defend a Nazi state, unless we are ourselves are Nazis, and we cannot criticize certain Palestinian politicians from a perspective of peace … To summarize: ‘the swastika, is our next yellow star’.”¹⁴

The temptation to disguise the emotional charge of judeocide with radical criticism of Israel is becoming more and more explicit, both on the right and the left. It seems that today anti-Zionism is, unconsciously for many, a means of extirpating a sense of guilt toward the Jews, who were treated so barbarously. Compensating for their own cowardice and the less than exemplary behavior of their parents and grand parents during the war, some of them have adopted an ostensibly responsible and determined position in favour of today’s supposed victims of injustice and contemporary barbarity. These victims are almost exclusively the Palestinians, while the rest of the world’s outcasts, victims of gross inequalities, of colonial, ethnic and fratricidal wars, and of genocide, receive scant attention.

            Another type of antisemitism has emerged in Belgium as well, from a sector that is most vulnerable to xenophobia: the population of Maghreb origin. Since the second intifada, some intellectuals have minimized this phenomenon on the pretext that it is linked to developments in the Middle East conflict. They may not be wrong: once a state of Palestine is created, the current resentment toward Jews of a large proportion of youth of Maghreb origin may indeed fade. However, when a generation of young Muslims has been raised to hate Jews, will the image of the Jew child-killer and the Jew blood-drinker magically disappear? The recent attacks against places of worship in Brussels and elsewhere in Europe demonstrate the influence of virulent antisemitic propaganda that has been circulating among Arab-Muslim circles.

Another theory that might explain the intensity of anti-Israeli hatred is the search for a scapegoat – a role imposed upon the Jews since the Middle Ages. Zionism is today described both by the extreme right and the extreme left, as well as by champions of human rights, as one of the evils of the world, and as such is offered as a scapegoat.

The capacity to identify the scapegoat is, according to René Girard, one of the primordial components of Western culture. The French philosopher showed in La violence et le sacré¹⁵ that the search for a scapegoat serves as a universal mechanism of conflict resolution. It is possible to discern a recurring theme in myths throughout the world: the murder or expulsion of an individual – maybe a god or a hero, a marginal figure or a monster – who has aroused the collective violence of the community. The disappearance of this figure will restore peace to the community.

Scorned by Christians and Muslims alike, Judaism is nevertheless sacred in their eyes because it represents the source, without which neither one nor the other would exist. Since neither Christianity nor Islam can explain itself without Judaism, this leads to an ambiguous relationship with the Jews, who are regarded by them simultaneously as a people of God and a traitor to His message, and in Christianity, even killers of the Messiah. Sanctified, despised and envied at one and the same time, it is hardly surprising that since the Middle Ages the Jewish people has been targeted as a scapegoat. In the nineteenth century socialists thinkers such as Marx and Proudhon targeted the “Jew of finance.” Kautsky, who perceived antisemitism as a form of social contest, went so far as to salute antisemitic movements in Hungary, which, according to him, “will go beyond its focus in order to reach in the long run, not only the Jews but all of the possessed.”¹⁶ Judeophobic anti-Zionism therefore appears as a sort of metaphor for anti-capitalism. It is within this context that we should understand the hatred of Baader-Meinhof member Ulrika Meinhof, who said: “Auschwitz meant that six million Jews were killed and thrown on the furnaces of Europe for what they were: Jews of money.”¹⁷ In his time, August Bebel denounced this form of socialism as the “socialism of the idiots.”¹⁸

Today, with Israel in the tailor-made role of the scapegoat, the guilty party, it has even been suggested that it might be sacrificed once and for all for the sake of peace and quiet. As Pierre Taguieff stated:

If Israel did not exist, peace and justice would rule in the Middle East. This leads to a subsidiary argument, namely, as a result of this non-existence Islamic terrorism could no longer justify itself or have any reason to exist – which presupposes that today it does have a reason! The practical and programmatic conclusion of such argumentation can thus be explained: Israel is one country too many and must disappear.¹⁹

In countries such as Belgium, with its inglorious colonial past and its present incessant criminal scandals (the Killers of Brabant,²⁰ the Cools²¹ and the Dutroux Affairs,²² to name but a few), Israel or Zionism can play a significant role. They can expiate once and for all Europe’s crimes and its colonial and imperialistic past

Thus, from Brussels to Paris and from London to Copenhagen, the concern that is sweeping the Jewish communities is less about criticism of Israel than about the extremely negative images and strong insinuations that have resulted from it. European anti-Judaism has found an unexpected and surprising reinforcement in the antisemitism borrowed by Arab/Muslim nations which have amplified it and rendered it contemporary. The antisemitism of the Arab and Muslim world is a confused mixture of Christian myths, medieval accusations, Nazi images, and revisionist and Islamist fables. Its rebound to the very heart of the West, which was thought to have eliminated such phenomenon, constitutes a sinister threat.

NOTES

* Joel Kotek is professor at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, and the Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme of Lille; in February 2003 he will take up a new post at the Centre d’Etudes Juives Contemporaines de Paris (musée de la Shoah).

 1.   Maurice Krajzman, The Image of the Jews and Judaism in Belgium History Books (Centre National des Hautes Etudes Juives, Bruxelles, ULB, 1973).

 2.   Catherine Berny, La terre trop promise, la Belgique et Israël, 1947–1950 (Louvain, 1988), p. 121.

 3.   The Jewish cause was more popular within the French speaking part of Belgium, which was more secularized than the Flemish part. The majority of socialists, liberals and communists were in favor of a Jewish state. The Catholics were more cautious, if not hostile.

 4.   “L’ordre va-t-il régner à Gaza?” Le Soir, 18 Dec. 2001.

 5.   See his book Respect mutuel, (Brussels, 2002).

 6.   Lieven Saerens, Vreemdelingen in een wereldstad. Een geschiedenis van Antwerpen en zijn joodse bevolking (1990–1944) (Tielt, 2000).

 7.   “Chambre de Représentants de Belgique,” 19 Feb. 2002, Ref. Doc. 50 0025/305.

 8.   P-Magazine 49 (7–13 Dec. 2001).

 9.   Joseph Gabel, Réflexion sur l’avenir des Juifs (Paris: Méridiens Klincksieck, 1987), p. 67.

10. Pierre-André Taguieff, La nouvelle judéophobie (Paris, 2001), p. 23.

11. “Réflexion à propos de Durban, www.ptb.be/international/article.phtml?section=AIAAABBV&object_id=5976, 6 Sept. 2001.

12. Alphonse Toussenel, Les Juifs, Rois de l’époque. Histoire de la féodalité financière (Paris, 1847), p. 83.

13. http://belgium.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=15904&group=webcast.

14. “Une croix gammée à la place de l'étoile,” chronique d’Alain Finkielkraut, L’Arche 531–2, (May–June 2002).

15. René Girard, La violence et le sacré (Paris, 1998).

16. Gabel, Réflexion sur l’avenir des Juifs, p. 67.

17. Henri Arvon, Les Juifs et l'idéologie (Paris, 1978), p. 52.

18. See Robert Wistrich, Socialism and the Jews: The Dilemmas of Assimilation in Germany and Austria-Hungary (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization series, 1982).

19. Taguieff, La nouvelle judéophobie, p. 54.

20. Unsolved series of brutal murders committed in the 1980s in the Brabant region.

21. Assassination of a former deputy prime minister and respected socialist leader in 1991.

22. 1995 kidnapping and murder of young girl by pedophile.