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Ariel Muzicant is the president of the European Jewish Congress
We’re witnessing a interval of intense animosity towards Jewish communities in Belgium, as we’re throughout all of Europe.
Threats — usually violent — addressed to Jewish kids at the moment are a daily prevalence each on-line and on the streets of Antwerp and Brussels. And for the reason that October 7 assaults in Israel, antisemitic incidents at the moment are 10 occasions higher than the common recorded ranges for equal durations.
College students on the Université Libre de Bruxelles, a pair strolling alongside the road in Antwerp, and a cemetery in Charleroi have all been focused over the previous few weeks for one purpose, and one purpose alone.
All of the targets have been Jewish. Younger Jews, previous Jews — even useless Jews.
This isn’t the primary time {that a} mass antisemitic assault — on this case, a pogrom perpetrated by Hamas in Israel, leading to extra Jews murdered than in any single 24-hour interval for the reason that Shoah — has introduced not reflection and solidarity, however extra hate and assaults.
We should be clear. Hate, delegitimization, antisemitic speech and the focusing on of Jews — they all the time result in bodily assaults. The latest petrol bomb assault on a synagogue in Berlin, the entry to the house of an aged Jewish couple being set alight in Paris, and essentially the most stunning desecration of the Jewish cemetery in Vienna all attest to a each day ambiance of worry for Europe’s Jews.
That is why the Jewish group right here in Belgium wants your solidarity, and why a visual assertion must exit from right here — the center of Europe — that Jews aren’t truthful sport or authentic collateral harm for these wishing to specific their opinions on a battle going down 4,000 kilometers away.
It shouldn’t want reasserting that Jewish communities are an integral a part of the material of Belgian and European society, entitled to the identical rights and protections as all residents. But, this can be a group that has confronted enormous ranges of antisemitic assaults for 20 years now, the worst of which was the terrorist murders on the Jewish Museum in Brussels in 2014.
The statistics inform their very own story — one among a society that’s now now not welcoming for Jews. Whether or not it’s the Belgian Jews compelled behind iron bars, safety cameras and armed police for the “proper” to attend faculty or pray in a synagogue, or the numerous households merely voting with their ft and transferring overseas, deciding that there’s no future within the nation of their start.
This can be a actuality that no Belgian or European politician, or certainly citizen, ought to settle for. The protection and safety of minority communities is itself a basic pillar of a democratic and liberal society and the correct of all residents.
That is why on December 10, the Worldwide Day of Human Rights, a nationwide march in opposition to antisemitism can be convened on the streets of the Belgian capital, underneath the slogan “By no means Once more.” The march is organized by the Belgian League Towards Antisemitism (LBCA), the Coordinating Committee of Belgian Jewish Organizations (CCOJB) and the Discussion board of Jewish Organisations (FJO), and it has the complete help of the European Jewish Congress.
All of Belgian society, and everybody who lives and works within the EU capital, is invited to mobilize and exhibit their help for his or her Jewish neighbors.
This can be a name for solidarity. It’s a plea that our frequent society be open, protected and welcoming to all, free from the horrors of intolerance, racism and antisemitism.
Within the phrases of the European Fee: “The resurgence of antisemitic incidents throughout Europe, which in latest days has reached exceptionally excessive ranges, recollects a few of the darkest durations of historical past.”
Certainly, it does.
This is similar struggle for a simply and tolerant society that everybody deserves. And we can’t struggle it alone. We shouldn’t should.
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