by Etgar Lefkowitz
The move is "much too little, much too late," says EJA chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin.
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Herman Brusselmans with his partner Lena, with whom
he had a son in February 2023, Oct. 15, 2023. Credit: Dirk Annemans via
Wikimedia Commons. |
A Belgian magazine has taken down a controversial column in which the writer said the death of Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip made him want to “stab every Jew in the throat.”
The incendiary remarks, which caused a public outcry and spurred legal action, come at a time when anti-Jewish hatred is escalating around the globe, including in Belgium, in the wake of Israel’s 10-month-long war against Hamas in Gaza.
The offending piece, penned by the Flemmish writer and columnist Herman Brusselmans in Humo magazine, begins with a personal broadside against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayhu reminiscent of the depiction of Jews in Nazi German propaganda, continues by citing a grossly falsified ratio of civilians to combatants killed in Gaza and then culminates with talk of killing every Jew.
The article caused Jewish groups to announce plans to file a lawsuit against the magazine, the columnist and the publisher.
“I understand that people who are not sufficiently familiar with HUMO or Herman Brusselmans’ style and are confronted with this quote without context are shocked,” Humo’s deputy editor-in-chief Matthias Vanderaspoilden wrote in a statement five days after the Aug. 4 column was first published. “It was of course never the intention to hurt the Jewish community. If that did happen, we would like to apologize for it. That is why we ultimately decided to take the column offline. Anyone who knows HUMO a little knows that it is certainly not an anti-Semitic magazine.”
The magazine has called the piece satire, and earlier refused to take it down or apologize.
The Brussels-based European Jewish Association called the removal of the article “a step in the right direction,” but said that the legal case against the writer, the magazine and the publisher would continue so that “justice is properly and meaningfully served.”
“The author has shown zero remorse for his ‘thought experiment’ of murdering any Jew he meets in the street,” said EJA chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin in a statement this weekend. “He continues to regard incitement to murder as his freedom of speech.”
The Jewish group, which is leading the legal action, had been calling for a full apology and suspension of the writer.
“This move is much too little, much too late,” said Margolin. “A strong, uncompromising response is absolutely necessary lest others think they can also call publicly for the mass murder of Jews.”
“The fact that they removed the article is essentially just stopping the bleeding,” Yohan Benizri, former president of the Belgian Federation of Jewish Organizations, told JNS on Sunday, noting that the magazine is convinced this is appropriate satire and the author remains defiantly unapologetic. “A judge needs to rule on whether this is incitement to hatred and antisemitic hate speech.”
‘Stab every Jew’
“I see an image of a crying and screaming Palestinian boy, frantically calling for his mother buried under the rubble, and I imagine that boy is my own son Roman and the mother my own girlfriend Lena, and I become so furious that I want to stab every Jew I encounter in the throat with a sharp knife,” the column reads.
“Of course, you always have to remember: not every Jew is a murderous bastard, and to embody that thought, I imagine an elderly Jewish man shuffling through my street, dressed in a faded shirt, fake cotton pants, and old sandals, and I feel pity for him and almost tear up, but later I wish him to hell, and yes, that’s a mood swing, and my upcoming collection will unfortunately be full of them,” it continues.
‘Freedom of expression’
Brusselmans has refused to apologize for the remarks in the column.
“Incitement to violence? In my column I do a thought exercise about how I would react if it were my loved ones who were affected. In the conditional tense. That sentence about the sharp knife is purely figurative, to emphasize the message. And that falls under the right to freedom of expression,” he told the Flemish newspaper Nieuwsblad.
‘Pure and open anti-Semitism’
A Belgian Member of the European Parliament (MEP) said on X on Tuesday that she was “completely flabbergasted and sad” after reading the article, which she called “appalling and totally unacceptable.”
“This is pure and open anti-Semitism,” wrote MEP Assita Kanko. “This is not about freedom of speech or satire, it’s a call to violence. It’s a call to murder. Why is @Humo even publishing something like that?”
She added: “I see no difference between a statement like this and those of Hamas, radical Muslims and other extremists, for whom Jews are not human beings but negligible creatures who can just be kicked to death.”
“On social media, openly antisemitic posts often remain up long enough to gain millions of views, allowing the normalization of Jew-hatred and dehumanization before they’re removed,” notes Ernest Herzog, head of the New York-based World Jewish Congress’ Combatting Anti-Semitism, Intel and Security Division.
Legal action to go forward this week
Yves Oschinsky, the president of the Belgian Federation of Jewish Organizations, known by its acronym CCOJB, told JNS that it would be coordinating filing suit with the EJA against the columnist as well, and that legal moves to this end would be taken this week. He added that a decision regarding where to file the suit would be made on Monday.
The main Belgian Jewish organization has brought successful legal cases against both a former Belgian MP, Laurent Louis, a Holocaust denier, and French comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala for antisemitic hate speech.
Between 40,000 and 50,000 Jews live in Belgium, mostly in Antwerp and Brussels.
Etgar Lefkowitz
Source: https://www.jns.org/belgian-publisher-takes-down-stab-every-jew-column-amid-outcry-lawsuit-threat/
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