Belgium 2008/9

 

While Belgium witnessed a slight rise in antisemitic incidents in 2008, the number recorded in the first four months of 2009 equaled the total for the whole of 2008. The strengthening of ties between some mainstream francophone parties and Muslim immigrants was demonstrated by their joint participation in rallies, such as a pro-Hamas demonstration held on January 17, 2009. Sketches broadcast by the leading Flemish TV channel portraying Hitler in a humorous fashion were condemned by Jewish organizations as antisemitic provocation.

 

The Jewish community

Some 35,000 Jewish citizens live in Belgium out of a total population of 10 million. The two main centers of Belgian Jewry are Antwerp and Brussels. The Comité de Coordination des Organisations Juives de Belgique (Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium – CCOJB) in Brussels is the community’s roof organization. The Forum Der Joodse Organisaties (Forum of Jewish Organizations; hereafter, the Forum) is the Flemish equivalent of the (now) francophone CCJOB. As the seat of the European Union and NATO, Brussels attracts Jewish organizations and institutions seeking to advocate European Jewish or Israeli interests. In Antwerp most Jewish children attend religious schools, whereas the more secular Brussels, location of the Centre Communautaire Laïc Juif, has two lay Jewish schools and a religious one. Radio Judaica, the first European Jewish radio station, is centered in Brussels. There are two monthly publications: Regards, published by the Centre Communautaire laïc Juif, and Contact J, issued by the Cercle Ben Gourion. The state-mandated Center for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (CECLR/CEOOR), includes the struggle against antisemitism in its brief.

 

POLITICAL PARTIES AND EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS

While separatist rhetoric in Belgium originated on the extreme right, it has entered the mainstream in Flanders, the Flemish part of Belgium. All Flemish parties across the political spectrum demand a new Belgian model − some kind of confederation which, in effect, would mean the end of Belgium − and reject unity between the rich north and the poor south (Wallonia). Flanders has not yet proclaimed its independence because it wants to include Brussels in the new state. However, although encircled by Flanders, Brussels is a separate region (Belgium has three: Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels) whose population is 90 percent francophone. The Jewish population, even in Antwerp (Flanders), is francophone and pro-Belgian, and fears a secession.

 

Immigrant and Islamist Groups

Belgium is home to a large number of Muslim communities. In fact, according to demographers such as Eric Corijn of the Flemish University of Brussels (VUB), Brussels is already the western capital with the highest percentage of persons from Muslim cultures or professing the Muslim religion. Population projections show that in about 2030, Islam will be the first religion in Brussels, the capital of Belgium and Europe. Twenty percent of Brussels’ citizens originate in Muslim countries (about 7 percent in Belgium as a whole). The majority are naturalized Belgians or are Belgian by birth; thus, some 20 percent of Brussels’ regional MPs have Arab-Muslim roots, mostly in Morocco. All were elected on democratic lists, mostly Socialist (Socialist Party − PS), but also Green (Ecolo) and Christian Democratic (CdH) ones. Because of their French colonial history, most Belgians of North African origin vote for francophone lists. In addition, a few organizations with undemocratic ideologies are active on the political scene, including two Islamist parties, Parti Citoyenneté et Prospérité (PCP) and Parti des Jeunes Musulmans (PJM, an offshoot of the PCP) (see ASW 2004), as well as the newer Egalité, whose establishment was inspired by the French humorist and antisemite Dieudonné (see France).

The Arab European League (AEL), an immigrant protest movement promoting the introduction of Islamic law (Shar`ia) into Europe “by democratic means,” was created in Antwerp in 2000. Its leader Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese-born Muslim, has aroused controversy due to his opposition to integration and to his demand to “de-zionize” Antwerp (see ASW 2003/4; also ASW 2006).

            While Belgian Muslims do not aspire to form a political party of their own, they have become increasingly active in Belgian political life, gaining concomitantly more representation within the democratic parties, city councils and legislative bodies of the state, especially within the French-speaking PS, to which the Muslim vote has become crucial. In order to become the leading party in the Brussels region, the PS has turned, since the 1989 institutional reform creating the Brussels region, to the immigrant, particularly the Moroccan, community. This has meant, above all, that the traditional pro-Israel position of the PS in the Brussels region has been replaced by a very aggressive anti-Israel stand. The Swiss theologian Tariq Ramadan has close ties to the PS.

             

            Further proof of the strengthening of ties between mainstream francophone parties and Muslim immigrants may be found in their joint participation in rallies, such as in the pro-Hamas demonstration held on January 17, 2009 during Israel’s Cast Lead Operation, with the exception of the liberal-conservative Reformist Movement (MR), and in contrast to France, where mainly extreme left parties took part in such rallies. 

            During Israel’s Gaza operation (late December 2008-mid-January 2009), the local Muslim population demonstrated its ability to quickly organize a series of mass demonstrations over the period of the war. Most of these rallies were infiltrated by groups of Muslim extremists who equated Israel with the Nazis, IDF soldiers with the SS and the Star of David with the swastika. Local Muslim youth who joined this movement rapidly popularized those slogans.

            In Belgium, a significant development among the pro-Palestinian far left has been the emergence of a strong pro-Hizballah movement, which views both the PLO and the Palestinian Authority as traitors and which ties its support for Hizballah/Hamas to that for the so-called Iraqi “resistance.”  For instance, the Marxist-Leninist PTB/PVDA (Parti du Travail de Belgique) links the fight against capitalism and imperialism to the Hamas/Hizballah struggle against Israel. The messages of these groups combine classical and modern antisemitic motifs: Jews have undue influence in the world; the Jews are trying to exploit the Holocaust for their own gain, Israel’s attitude toward the Palestinians is in principle no different from that of the Nazis toward the Jews; and Israel is waging a war of extermination against the Palestinians. Among all progressive and leftist circles, the Jew who does not openly disown the State of Israel is considered the enemy of humankind. Indymedia Belgium (see also below) is one of the vectors of radical anti-Zionism and the new antisemitism.

 

Belgium, A Special Case

Belgian attitudes toward Israel and even toward Judaïsm are also influenced by internal factors: 1) the Catholic tradition, which has been anti-Jewish since the Middle Ages; 2) difficulties in dealing with the Holocaust, especially in Flanders; anti-Zionism is thus a way to forget, forgive or trivialize Flemish collaborationism.

            For contemporary Belgium opposition to Israel serves the interests of many components of its society, on the left as well as on the right, Catholic as well as secular, immigrant as well as Walloon or Flemish. A veritable “cultural code,” anti-Zionism serves to express all sorts of resentments: failure to integrate, fear of globalization, class warfare and conspiracy theories, such as the 9/11 attacks and H1N1 influenza as Jewish plots. As in the Middle Ages, the Jew, reclassified as the Zionist, has become the primary cause of the world’s ills. If one is to believe the leading editorialists of Wallonia, Flanders and Brussels, all the frustrations of the Arab world are a result of non-resolution of the Palestinian question. By its very powerfulness and arrogance, Israel constitutes the main threat to world peace.  No other issue commands such attention (or any attention at all) in Belgian universities.

           

Flemish and French Political Parties

The Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest − VB) succeeded the racist Vlaams Blok (see ASW 2004). After toning down some of the Blok’s extremist rhetoric, VB won significant percentages of the vote in Flanders. Despite its demonstrations of solidarity with the Jewish community since the creation of the AEL, and its more moderate tone in relation to the Holocaust and the Jews in general, the VB continues to retain ties with small neo-fascist and antisemitic groups, such as Voorpost, Were Di and the Vlaamse Militanten Orde (VMO). Besides being the leading political party in the city of Antwerp, having gained 35 percent of the overall vote in the 2004 elections, the VB is also the main Flemish political party in the Brussels regional parliament, with 6 out of the 11 seats held by Flemings.

            In September 2008, MEP Frank Vanhecke, one of the leaders of Vlaams Belang was interviewed by Israel’s Ha’aretz after the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs decided to lift his immunity (see below). Vanhecke said he was aware that many Jews viewed Vlaams Belang as antisemitic, but that this "misconception" was due in part to a "grave error" on the part of some Flemish secessionists who had sided with the Nazis in the 1940s "only as a misguided and naïve attempt to achieve independence." He also referred to "the unacceptable behavior of a few weeds" who associated themselves with the party, adding: "They say I'm antisemitic when the truth is I am one of Israel's staunchest defenders in the European Parliament.” After the interview, the leader of the Forum Der Joodse Organisaties reaffirmed the necessity of the Cordon Sanitaire, a pact between all other Belgian parties pledging to refrain from joining any coalition with the VB. This reasoning is based, inter alia, on the following:

1)      In June 2008, former American KKK leader David Duke came for a second visit to Flanders to participate in a nationalist meeting. While there, he was the guest of two VB militants: Karin Milik, a VB council member of the Sint-Niklaas municipality, and Thierry De Rijcke, the body guard of Filip Dewinter, the number two of the party.

2)      In 2008, Roland Pirard, a former staff member of the FN (see below) now in the VB, published an apologetic biography, Adolf Hitler, Sa véritable histoire (Adolf Hitler: His True Story). This 479-page book, published in France by Grancher, tries to rehabilitate Hitler’s work in the social field. Pirard is a VB representative on the Brussels municipal council for the constituency of Berchem-Sainte-Agathe.

3)      In December, Roeland Raes, a former VB vice president, was again convicted of Holocaust denial (see below).

            Since its establishment in Brussels in 1985, the francophone Front national belge (FN) has attracted the leaders of political groups and circles known for their endorsement of antisemitism and Holocaust denial, such as the Fraternité sacerdotale Saint-Pie X (see below), Belgique et Chrétienté (see below), and Cercle Copernic (a cultural group belonging to the neo-Nazi stream of the New Right). A number of “independent” publications with antisemitic content, such as Walloon Altaïr, have expressed support for the Front’s political struggle. Following the June 2004 regional elections, the FN became the second major party in Charleroi after the Socialist Party, but remains only the fifth largest within the Wallonia region.

            Unlike its Flemish counterparts, the French-speaking right has never put antisemitism on hold, as demonstrated by postings on the forum of the Tonnelier.be website, where the “Jewish Internationale” is fiercely denounced. Senate member Michel Delacroix was forced to resign from the FN presidency over a video showed him sitting with some VB acquaintances (such as Luc Vankeerberghen) and singing a song to the tune of “l'eau vive” by Jewish singer Guy Beart, but with the lyrics changed to tell the story of a Jewish woman sent to the gas chamber in Dachau. He suggested that former FN president Daniel Féret, who fled to France to avoid a prison sentence imposed in 2008 for fiscal fraud, might have had a role in exposing the tape (see also ASW 2006).

            In October, during a conversation with students, FN parliamentary deputy Patrick Cocriamont denied that gas chambers existed during World War II. He also revealed that links existed between some FN militants and neo-Nazi organizations.

 

Extreme Right Extra-parliamentary Groups

Among extra-parliamentary groups of the Belgian far right antisemitism is less of a taboo than among parliamentary rightists, and many such groups maintain regular contact with parliamentary representatives of right-wing extremism. In francophone circles, the Nation movement, a self-proclaimed alternative to the FN, represents the radical far right (see ASW 2006). Nation also has ties to the outlawed Unité radicale in France and the NPD in Germany, as well as to the local FNB and VB, and significantly, to radical Islamist elements, such as the French Parti des musulmans de France, as well as with the French black racist Mouvement des Damnés de l'Impérialisme, condemned in France for antisemitism.

            The integrist Belgique et Chrétienté (B&C), created in Liège (Wallonia) in 1989, has links to the FNB and is a recognized lobby in the European parliament. The organization could be considered the political wing of the Catholic fundamentalist Fraternité Saint-Pie X. The latter is a dissident (and excommunicated) branch of the Catholic Church, whose declared mission is to fight “anti-Belgian and anti-Christian racism.” B&C leader Alain Escada is also founder of Polémique-info, a weekly magazine appearing both online and in print, which frequently attacks “restless and anonymous high finance,” a euphemism for the Jews.

            In Flanders, the Flemish branch of the international neo-Nazi movement Blood & Honour, organized two events commemorating Hitler’s birthday, on April 18 and 19, 2008, first a ceremony and the next day a concert with the German antisemitic band Die Liebenfels Kapelle.

 

Antisemitic activity

Belgium witnessed a slight rise in antisemitic incidents in 2008 − 72 compared to 69 in 2007. There were 5 cases of physical assault, 8 of threats, 4 of vandalism of Jewish property, 27 of offensive articles, cartoons and graffiti, and 28 of abusive letters, emails, and comments on Internet forums.  The number of antisemitic incidents in the first four months of 2009 equaled the total for the whole of 2008 and returned figures to the 2001 level. In January 2009 alone, during Israel’s Cast Lead Operation, 40 incidents were recorded, including 2 of physical assault, 9 of threats, and 6 of vandalism of Jewish property.

            The perpetrators tend to be youths of various backgrounds: East European, as well as Maghrebi and, more recently, Turkish. In the Antwerp region, strong support for the extreme right and incitement of young Muslims by extremist Arab organizations such as AEL constitute a potentially explosive cocktail.  

 

Violence, Vandalism and Harassment

While the cities most affected were Brussels and Antwerp, there were also incidents in Charleroi and Ostend, where only a handful of Jews live. Most were directed against members of the small but visible Orthodox Antwerp Jewish community. For example,

on September 13, several Jews who had been praying at the Balz synagogue in Antwerp were attacked with a golf club and other means after they came to the defense of some children outside the synagogue who were being harassed by two men with dogs. The police had to be called in twice and one of the Jewish victims was hospitalized. Later that night, a young Jew who was approaching his car after he had come out of a bar was accosted by five men of North African origin, who assaulted him and abused him with antisemitic remarks. In addition, in February three members of a group of 16-year-old "native" Wilrijk (Antwerp) youngsters were arrested after they were caught insulting and threatening students from the Wilrijk Yeshiva. The harassment against the students had reportedly been going on repeatedly. Also in February, a Hassidic Jew was harassed by four youths of North African origin at a gas station in Brussels, with insults such as “Eh, Rabbi, we know you. We know where you live, Rabbi Jacob.” The victim was rescued by the gas station owner.

            The peak of the violence occurred with the start of Israel’s Gaza operation and was directed especially against Jewish symbols: vandalizing of the menorah of in Antwerp (December 26); desecration of the Charleroi synagogue three times (December 29, with a Molotov cocktail, and January 5 and 7, 2009); an arson attempt on the Sephardic synagogue in Brussels; and a threat against the Ostend synagogue. As in previous cases, most of those incidents were ignored by the press.

 

Insults and Propaganda

In soccer stadiums antisemitic insults hurled at Jewish teams have become more common. For instance, in February, a football match between two local teams, Maccabi and Sint-Katelijne-Waver) was interrupted when the goal keeper of the Flemish team told one of the Maccabi players: "Go back to Germany."

            On June 24, activists from the anti-Israel Paix Juste au Proche-Orient (Just Peace in the Middle East) movement (led by Marc Abramowicz, a Jew) performed a psychodrama in the streets of the city center of Nivelles, some 30 km south of Brussels, in protest against Israel’s 60th anniversary. Seeking to illustrate what their leaflets called the "expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 when Israel was created," two politicians, MP Thérèse Snoy, from the Greens, and former Belgian Defense Minister and Socialist MP André Flahaut, a city councilor in Nivelles, addressed the crowd, proclaiming to be “determined to fight against all exclusions, all Nazisms, all fascisms wherever they are." The Israeli embassy deplored the performance, claiming that “these associations are taking an active part in importing a regional conflict into the streets of Belgium and feeding antisemitism." According to historian Joël Kotek, the drama was reminiscent of medieval antisemitic Christian processions and mystery plays and had succeeded in dramatically reigniting fear of fellow Jewish citizens. Children who witnessed the psychodrama were terrified.

 

 

            In November and December, drawing on a Christian deicide theme, over 30 non-confessional NGOs (including Oxfam and 11.11.11, an umbrella group of NGOs − both funded by Belgian taxpayers) formed a human chain against the "apartheid wall" and the "sly ethnic cleansing" Israel was allegedly perpetrating against Palestinians. The organizers also claimed that 400 Christian families had had to leave Bethlehem because of Israeli violence.

            The Belgian site of the “alternative” Internet press agency Indymedia Belgium publishes antisemitic cartoons of the controversial Brazilian caricaturists Carlos Latuff and Belgian Benjamin Hecht, and is the most radically anti-Zionist among the European Indymedia sites.

             

attitudes toward the holocaust and the nazi era

While anti-Zionist propaganda used to legitimize antisemitic positions is disseminated widely in Belgium and antisemitism itself has penetrated mainstream Belgian society, taboos that have been in place since World War II are also being broken. This is exemplified by several skits broadcast on the leading Flemish private television channel VTM. On October 27, protests by the Forum and CCOJB forced VRT (Flemish public television) to scrap a TV show about Adolf Hitler's supposed favorite dish − alpine trout in butter sauce − as part of a series about famous people's favourite foods. On November 29, VRT again caused a furor when during a travel show promoting Berlin it portrayed Hitler as a male stripper giving the Nazi salute in front of the flag of Nazi Germany.

 

 

The incident triggered a protest by the German embassy, which called it extremely tasteless.  This sketch was canceled too, but a few ads for both shows had already appeared in a TV magazine.

            On December 21, comedian Philippe Geubels [sic] accused Belgians Jews of overreacting to the food show.  "What are they going to do if there is a big gas leak in Antwerp?" he asked, referring to the Belgian port city, which has a large Jewish community. "Take the city to court for provocation? Pre-emptively file charges against anyone who dares joke about that?" Geubels also said the Holocaust could not happen again because Jews are much smarter.  "They have spread across the world. Try rounding them up! Most are in America so you cannot send them by train to Germany to die in gas chambers."

            Although most mainstream humorists no longer dare mock the Jews or the Holocaust, according to the Forum and CCOJB, the VRT's repeated antisemitic provocations disguised as humor dishonoured its role as a public broadcaster. It said it planned legal steps against the VRT and asked the government of Flemish-speaking Belgium, which is responsible for the station, to act against the culprits.

            A poster campaign launched by the SNCB (public railways company) in Flanders illustrates the extent of trivialization of the Holocaust in Belgium. In October, during a cleanliness drive on the railways, posters bearing reproductions of timetables with destinations such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec and Chelmno appeared at some Flemish railways stations. They were later removed.

            French Holocaust denier Vincent Reynouard who fled to Belgium after being convicted in France in November 2007 was tried in Brussels too, in June 2008, together with Siegfried Verbeke, founder of the Belgium-based Foundation for Free Historical Research (Vrij Historisch Onderzoek − VHO), on Holocaust denial charges.

            On December 12, the same tribunal convicted Roeland Raes a former VB senator and party vice president. He had been charged in 2001 with Holocaust denial under the Belgian Holocaust denial law after saying on Dutch television: "I doubt the systematic extermination of the Jews and I also doubt the number of deaths... and also whether camps such as Auschwitz were all meant to be extermination camps." The charges were dropped in early 2006, at the request of the public prosecutor and after a hearing, but following an appeal by the Forum, the case was resumed. In December, he was given a suspended sentence of 4 months imprisonment. The Forum and the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (founded by parliamentary act) received €1,000 in damages. His civil rights were revoked for a period of ten years.

 

responses to racism and antisemitism 

On November 20, two Dutch members of Blood & Honour were ordered to pay a  €1100 fine for making the Nazi salute in the German cemetery of Lommel, northern Belgium. Stefan Wijkamp, 41 and Joop Glimmerveen had participated in March 2007 in the ceremony, which had been banned by the local authorities. Wijkamp told the court he considered Hitler his “spiritual guide.”

            In February 2008, the Moroccan security services arrested Abdelkader Belliraj together with several dozen other activists in Islamic organizations, on suspicion of belonging to an al-Qa`ida network that was plotting to topple the regime of King Muhammad VI. Belliraj, who emigrated to Belgium from Morocco, circulated in Arab circles on the margins of the left and in radical Islamic circles, and carried out operations for the Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal group. Following his arrest he confessed to six murders in 1988−89, including the assassination of Joe Wybran, then president of the CCOJB.  Belliraj’s claim that he had been an informer for the Belgian security services for years might explain why Belgian law enforcement authorities never arrested him.