'A climate of hate'

Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.

Four people have been murdered (a fourth person died after the video below was released) in a terror attack on the Jewish museum in Brussels on Saturday.

Let's go to the videotape.



The reactions have been shocked. And for reasons I'm going to explain below, I have to wonder why everyone seems so surprised.

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders was at the scene shortly after the attack, and told reporters that the two other victims had been shot inside the museum. "I hope we will identify those responsible very quickly," he said.

Reynders said he had been nearby when he saw people fleeing and heard shots and rushed to help. When he saw "bodies on the ground in pools of blood" he called the 112 emergency number and rounded up eye-witnesses to assist the police. 

Police quickly cordoned off the area.

"I am shocked by the murders committed at the Jewish museum, I am thinking of the victims I saw there and their families," Reynders said on Twitter.

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The head of Belgium's Jewish Consistory told La Libre that "it is probably a terrorist act. For us it is an extremely serious act."

He said the museum had received no recent threats and that its staff "are in shock".

Milquet said the government had moved to increase protection at Jewish buildings as well as the Israeli embassy.

Belgium Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo also expressed that he was "very shocked" by the attack.

"All Belgians are united and show solidarity in the face of this odious attack on a Jewish cultural site," he added.

They weren't the only ones who professed shock.

Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur told the BBC as stating that the shooting was likely a terror attack and that the choice of location “isn't a coincidence.”

About half of Belgium's 42,000-strong Jewish community lives in Brussels.

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“Two years after Toulouse, and on the eve of the European elections, this despicable attack is yet another terrible reminder of the kind of threats Europe’s Jews are currently facing,” World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder said in a statement shortly after the shooting. The attack was “clearly was targeted at Jews.”

“Tomorrow, we must all work together to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. If that means to improve security at Jewish sites in Europe, we have no choice. It must be done. If not, more people may be able to carry out such terrible crimes,” he added.

But not everyone is shocked. From the first link again.

A Jewish community figure, Joel Rubinfeld, told AFP it clearly "is a terrorist act" after two men were seen driving up and double-parking outside the museum.

The gunman opened fire, allegedly shooting indiscriminately before getting away.

Rubinfeld, who heads the country's anti-Semitic League, said the act was the result of "a climate of hate."

World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder and European Jewish Congress President Dr. Moshe Kantor don't sound too shocked either. Neither does the Anti-Defamation League. This is from the second link.

“Two years after Toulouse, and on the eve of the European elections, this despicable attack is yet another terrible reminder of the kind of threats Europe’s Jews are currently facing,” World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder said in a statement shortly after the shooting. The attack was “clearly was targeted at Jews.”

“Tomorrow, we must all work together to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. If that means to improve security at Jewish sites in Europe, we have no choice. It must be done. If not, more people may be able to carry out such terrible crimes,” he added.

According to EJC President Dr. Moshe Kantor, while details of the attack are still lacking, it is clear that it is indicative of a “permanent threat to Jewish targets in Belgium and across the whole of Europe.”

"This is once again, much like the savage murders in Toulouse, a clear example of where hate and anti-Semitism leads. European government must send out a clear message of zero tolerance towards any manifestation of anti-Semitism."

Kantor recently made waves by stating that without a significant reduction in the fear and insecurity plaguing European Jewry, normative Jewish life on the continent is “unsustainable.”

“Incidents such as this do not occur in a vacuum, and are the direct result of a systematic culture of hate and anti-Semitism against the Jewish community and the State of Israel in so many parts of Europe, including Belgium,” the Israeli Jewish Congress asserted.

A spokesman for the organization pointed out that according to a recent Anti-Defamation League Study, 27 percent of Belgians harbor anti-Semitic sentiments.

According to the ADL, Belgium comes in as the sixty third most anti-Semitic country out of one hundred territories polled around the world.

I'm not shocked either. In January 2013, I wrote a post in which Brussels was called the capital of European anti-Semitism. 

Belgium, which hosts the European Union capital in Brussels, provides a paradigmatic example of the new-style ֲ hatred for the Jews. The Belgian capital’s oldest Jewish school,ֲ named forֲ Maimonides, will be closed soon due to anti-Semitic attacks and lack of students. Like during the Nazi occupation, it is dangerous today for a Jewish girl to go to school in Brussels these days. They are routinelyֲ told "Dirty Jew – go to your country".

Belgium has 40,000 Jews. In 2012, watchdog groups recorded a 50 percent rise in anti-Semitic hatred.

It is estimated that 30% of the Brussels population (1 million) is Muslim and they will be the majority in three generations. The daily De Morgen published the results of a survey among young Muslims in Brussels high schools. It finds that half "can be described as anti-Semitic, which is a very high rate", says VUB sociologist Mark Elchardus.

Meanwhile, Belgian authorities declared war on Judaism. A Belgian court in the city of Antwerp has just forced a Jewish Orthodox school for girls, affiliated with a hassidic sect, to admit the two sons of an anti-Zionist hareidi militant who attended the Holocaust denial conference in Tehran in 2006 and was photographed kissing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

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In 1940 the Belgian Jews were burned in Auschwitz with the voluntary participation of the Belgian authorities. Seventy years later, Belgian pupils are learning how to target Israeli flags, effigies of an Antwerp Hassid, a synagogue, the Maccabi sports club - and ultimately, to kill Israelis.

These days, while the Belgian authorities were opening the Jewish museum in the building that served as a Nazi station, passengers on a train in Brussels got a shock as the following announcement came over the speaker, “Welcome to the train to Auschwitz. The Jews are asked to get off at Buchenwald".

Presumably the same Jewish museum at which four people lost their lives today. 

Time to make aliya guys.