BRUSSELS — In a heartfelt plea addressed to the Belgian Prime Minister, Yves Oschinsky, President of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations of Belgium, and Baroness Regina Sluszny, President of the Forum der Joodse Organisaties, urge the Belgian government to prioritize the safety and concerns of the Jewish community amidst rising antisemitism and political polarization.
The full text of the letter can be found below:
Dear Mr. Prime Minister,
The Jewish presence in Belgium is ancestral, and there is no need to describe the many contributions made by Belgian Jews to the economic, social, scientific, political, cultural and literary development of our country.
The Jewish community has always been perfectly integrated into Belgian society, with a spirit of openness and non-communitarianism.
In recent years, it has suffered the effects of ever-increasing antisemitism, which has literally exploded since October 7, 2023.
After the shock, extreme sadness and anger provoked by the unspeakably cruel barbarity of the October 7 pogrom, our community is now living in deep concern for its own safety, given the strong hostility it feels directed towards it.
Worse still, in the absence of any sign of real empathy, members of our community feel isolated and abandoned, to such an extent that many Jews are wondering about their future in Belgium.
Most Jewish Belgians are attached to the State of Israel and strongly support its existence and security.
October 7th represented an existential threat to the State of Israel, which it was duty-bound to defend by protecting its population - an essential right on which the world's major democracies have agreed.
You yourself affirmed this in the days following October 7.
When you received family members of Israeli hostages held captive by Hamas, you declared that the taking of hostages was an intolerable war crime, and that putting pressure on Hamas had influence.
Since your visit to the Middle East with your Spanish colleague, your rhetoric has been transformed into strong hostility to Israel, with Belgium leading the way among European countries in radical criticism of Israel's response.
Your recent positions no longer make any reference to the barbaric crimes of October 7. There is no mention of the feminicides, rapes and abject mutilations suffered by Israeli women; there is not even a demand for the release of the hostages who have been held captive for almost six months, nor is there an expression of our country's solidarity with the Israeli population.
You even asked Israel to demonstrate that it was not using famine as a weapon of war - a request for negative proof which goes against every elementary rule requiring a prosecutor to provide proof of his accusations.
Several members of your government have themselves embraced this radical attitude against Israel, with declarations astonishing in their aggressive tone, such as Madame De Sutter, who has called for a boycott of Israel and action before the International Court of Justice, following the example of South Africa; such as Madame Gennez, who also called for action before the same Court, or accused Germany of finding itself on the wrong side of history for a second time, thus likening Israel to the Nazi state; or Madame Khattabi, who had difficulty identifying Hamas as a terrorist organization.
You are aware of the direct link between the situation in the Middle East and the explosion of antisemitism, and the equation made by too many people between Israel and the Jews, whom they blame for a war 4,000 km away, for which they are in no way responsible.
Our intention is not to enter into an in-depth analysis of all the motives behind this war, whose consequences for all civilian populations are deeply disturbing, but to draw your attention to the direct consequences for our community of what can be described as the polarization of the State and the importation of the conflict to the highest level of the State.
It is this transfer of the conflict that puts us in direct danger and worries us to the utmost, fearing of acts of violence.
We call on you and your government to express a nuanced and balanced position, following the example of many of your European counterparts, in particular the French and Germans, who have never ceased to decry the barbaric atrocities of October 7 and to call for the release of the hostages, who are truly - not metaphorically - in hell.
The conclusions of the European Summit of March 21-22, 2024 also set out a more balanced position than that currently demonstrated by Belgium.
Is it utopian to think that demanding that a terrorist organization release all hostages, thus putting an end to abject war crimes, and surrender its weapons, would constitute an instant end to the war? Indeed, this is what the German Foreign Minister recently demanded.
By expressing a balanced position, we can hope for a de-escalation of the current extreme polarization in Belgium, which we believe you must be concerned about, given your role of ensuring peace and social cohesion.
By abandoning Israel, you are abandoning your Jewish community.
Why, here in Belgium, when nearly a hundred graves were desecrated in the Marcinelle Jewish cemetery, or when the area around the Kraainem Jewish cemetery was desecrated, were there so few expressions of indignation and empathy from the political world and the government, whereas in France, in similar circumstances, the President of the Republic went to the scene, underlining his recognition of the seriousness of such acts?
Why, on March 8, during the march to mark International Women's Day, when a group of Jewish women were expressing their solidarity with the Israeli women who had been the victims of femicide, rape, mutilation, torture, ill-treatment and hostage-taking on October 7, were jostled and threatened by a group of pro-Palestinian men under the slogan "They're Zionists, surround them” and, fortunately, they were able to escape and thus avoid the worst, this in the silence and absence of official indignation, while, at the same time, the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was sounding the alarm, precisely about the shocking increase in extremist disorder and crime linked to Islamist movements?
Why, when European institutions were calling on member states to draw up a strategy for combating antisemitism by the end of 2022, and to appoint a national antisemitism coordinator for this purpose, are we content, on January 15, 2024, to launch an inter-federal coordination mechanism for combating antisemitism built on the embers of a previous antisemitism watch unit set up in 2004, which produced no tangible results and made it obvious from the outset that the political will to draw up the expected strategy was lacking?
It's time to echo the pressing concerns of Belgian Jews, it's time to listen to them, it's high time to appoint an independent national coordinator and give him or her the means to finally develop a strategy to combat antisemitism.
Mr. Prime Minister, don't abandon your Jewish community.
Yves Oschinsky
President, Comité de Coordination des Organisations Juives de Belgique (CCOJB)
Baroness
Regina Sluszny
President of the Forum der Joodse Organisaties (FJO)
