Herman Brusselmans responds after fuss about column about Gaza: “Maybe that sentence should not have been left standing”

Writer Herman Brusselmans came under fire last summer after his Therecolumn about the suffering of the population in Gaza. He does not find all accusations well-founded.

Writer Herman Brusselmans responded on Tuesday evening to the fuss that arose after his column about Gaza. In it he wrote that “the image of a Palestinian boy screaming for his mother lying under the rubble” – and the idea that it would be his girlfriend and son who would be buried under the rubble – makes him “so angry” that he calls every Jew whom he encounters “wants to ram a pointed knife down his throat”.

“I am being blamed for things that are unjustified,” Brusselmans said Gert’s table. “But together with my lawyer Omar Souidi, I have decided to say as little as possible about it publicly. There is another lawsuit coming, on Monday there was a summons from a fifth organization that is suing me (the Jewish Information and Documentation Center, ed.). So everything is now in the hands of the Justice Department.”

According to the writer, most reactions to his much-discussed column were positive. “Most did not understand that one sentence from the column was isolated and that I was accused of very serious offenses based on it. If you read the entire column and other columns of mine, you will realize that I am not an anti-Semite at all, not a racist at all, not a negationist at all…”

“Mean anger”

Didn’t he realize when he wrote the column that there would be a lot of commotion about it? “I was so angry about the images I saw, about what Israel was doing in Gaza. I was so furious that I… And then you can write a hundred different sentences and just that sentence came to me and I left it alone. The editor and deputy editor-in-chief also let him pass. Maybe that shouldn’t have happened, but it did. I am not saying that I continue to support it, but I do still support the genuine anger at what Israel is doing in Gaza. That’s the bottom line of the whole thing.”

The fuss also has an impact on his family, according to Brusselmans, who was threatened online. “It’s not pleasant. I’m not comfortable, neither is Lena. She is also involved and has to deal with it every day. And then there is my son who feels that tension at home every day. I plan to write a book or a longer piece about it someday, but for now I’ll remain silent.”