According to an IPSOS poll for the Jonathans Institute, 14% of Belgians express an aversion to Jews, twice as many as the French. This figure rises to 22% in Brussels where 11% of the population has sympathy for Hamas. Alarming.
We knew the widespread anti-Semitism in Belgium, this survey provides further confirmation and shows that the perception of Jews has further deteriorated since October 7 with the increase in anti-Semitic acts, denounced by the Belgian League against the anti-Semitism. What is striking in the survey is that in each question, the anti-Semitic prejudice is much greater in Brussels than at the national level: the capital of Belgium and of Europe has 30 to 40% Muslims.
Maddening
Thus, 16% of Brussels residents think that there are too many Jews in Belgium (compared to 11% at the national level), 29% that they are responsible for the economic crises (14%), 48% that they feel superior to others (34%), 47% that they are doing to the Palestinians what the Germans did to the Jews (35%).
Across the country, 43% of Muslims think that “Belgian Jews are not really Belgians like the others».
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These figures are frightening. The observation is, however, not without flaws. The study’s conclusions downplay the central factor in contemporary anti-Semitism in Belgium, which is the relatively recent establishment of Islam. It places Muslims, the extreme right and the extreme left on the same footing as co-responsible for this situation, the latter two being defined according to a method specific to Ipsos and representing respectively 4 and 2% of the sample. However, the far left and the left in Belgium, as in France, have massively taken up the cause of the Palestinians in the conflict in Gaza, their actions often accompanied by anti-Semitic excesses. Conversely, the Vlaams Belang in Belgium and the Rassemblement national in France, parties generally but questionably described as far-right, have instead shown sympathy towards Israel and were not originally of no anti-Semitic slippage since October 7. No doubt this new Jonathans Institute, created at the beginning of 2024 by left-wing liberal figures, is still having some difficulty getting rid of old software equating anti-Semitism with Christianity or the far right.
Many other signals bear witness to the sad reality that Jews are no longer safe in Brussels. Jewish community places are protected by concrete blocks, cameras and an entrance gate. While the veil is omnipresent in public spaces in Brussels (worn by more than half of women in certain neighborhoods), we no longer see kippahs in the streets of Brussels. A Jewish school located near the Gare du Midi, a predominantly Muslim neighborhood, had to move after an increase in incidents endangering Jewish teenagers taking the metro. The Shoah has not been taught for a long time in the majority of schools in Brussels. On the campus of the misnamed Université Libre de Bruxelles, Jewish students were harassed and molested after October 7.
The passive political class
However, in 2011, a study by sociologist Mark Elchardus of VUB (Vrij Universiteit Brussels) showed that half of Brussels Muslim students were anti-Semitic.
In reality, the rise of anti-Semitism is contemporary with the growth of Muslim immigration which accelerated from the year 2000. The political world acted like the three monkeys: not seeing, not hearing, Do not say anything. During Holocaust commemorations, the authorities repeat with their hands on their hearts that anti-Semitism has no place in Belgium, while passively witnessing its rise in power without ever wanting to recognize it. The Muslim vote has become essential to the success of left-wing parties whose electoral weight in Brussels, a consequence of immigration, has increased from 34 to 54% in twenty years. Faced with tens and now hundreds of thousands of Muslim votes, those of the thirty thousand Jews of Belgium, a real minority, do not carry much weight. There are a few of us who have tried, in vain, to warn for 20 years about this serious trend that neither the media nor the political world wanted to see.
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But it is perhaps the moving testimonies of Jews from Brussels that are most telling: “Arriving from Hungary in 1945, my grandfather always told me that Belgium was a safe country for Jews and that our family would never risk anything there. Today, I explain to my children that their future is not here and that they must prepare to make a life elsewhere.”, a compatriot told me. Another, whose family left Turkey at the beginning of the 20th century and moved to Portugal after October 7, observes: “Brussels is a territory lost by its political calculations based on exacerbated communitarianism. Unlike France, there is no real red line. If the danger is not immediate, the atmosphere leaves no room for any hope.. The fate of Belgian Jews seems sealed, because these testimonies are worth every analysis. Belgium is gradually becoming Judenreinwhile celebrating with joy and good conscience, the great mass of living together…
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