The Brussels-based European Jewish Association plans to file a lawsuit on Friday against a Belgium magazine columnist who wrote that he wants to “stab every Jew in the throat with a pointed knife” over the deaths of Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip.
The legal action comes after the incendiary remarks were published in a Belgian Dutch-language weekly on Aug. 4. and at a time when anti-Jewish hatred is escalating around the globe, including in Belgium, in the wake of the 10-month-long war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“A red line has been crossed here which we will not accept under any circumstance and which we will fight with all our force,” European Jewish Association chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin told JNS from Brussels on Thursday. “This is both distinct antisemitism and incitement to murder.”
The offending piece, penned by Flemish writer and columnist Herman Brusselmans in Humo magazine, begins with a personal broadside against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, continues by citing a grossly falsified ratio of civilians to combatants killed in Gaza and then ends with talk of killing every Jew Brusselmans sees.
“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 pointed 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.”
The magazine’s editors have asserted in the Belgian press that the column was written as satire and refused to apologize or run a retraction. It has not responded to a JNS request for comment.
The European Jewish Association said it plans to sue the columnist and the magazine.
“We know this is a shock-jock journalist who pushed the boundaries,” Margolin said. “But publicly expressing his desire to stab the throat of any Jew he comes across is both an invitation for others to do likewise and completely out of bounds.”
Yves Oschinsky, president of the Belgian Federation of Jewish Organizations, known by its acronym CCOJB, said on Thursday that the federation would be coordinating filing suit against Brusselmans and have instructed a lawyer to act on its behest.
The main Belgian Jewish organization has brought successful legal cases over the last decade against a former Belgian Parliament member, Laurent Louis, a Holocaust denier, as well as the French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, for antisemitic hate speech.
“We stand an excellent chance of winning this case as well,” said Yohan Benizri, former president of the Belgian Federation of Jewish Organizations and a lawyer by profession.
He noted that the public prosecutor has yet to speak out about the case, which appears to be indicative of how weak the response has been by the Belgian authorities, while the magazine’s answer to the widespread criticism by Jewish community leaders has been to try to silence them.
Between 40,000 and 50,000 Jews live in Belgium, mostly in Antwerp and Brussels.