“I see an image of a little Palestinian boy in tears and cries, calling his mother buried under the rubble. I then become so furious that I want to push a pointed knife in the throat of each Jew that I meet”. For having written these hateful remarks in the Flemish magazine Thereon August 6, 2024, the writer Herman Brusselmans was acquitted last March by the Ghent Criminal Court. The judge considered that the columnist had not intended to “encourage hatred or violence against Jewish community or to deny the holocaust”. For the independent journalist Rafaël Amselem, a former study manager for the liberal Think-Thank Free generation, “the Brusselman case, or rather the non-affair Brusselmans, is a challenge to understanding.” Why, today in Belgium, an appeal to violence against the Jews, does not arouse almost any reaction? He went beyond which to investigate. The first part of his story, published in the review Kis edifying.
L’Express: Has Belgium become the laboratory of anti-Semitism in Europe?
Rafaël Amselem: The expression is of Joël Kotek, historian and professor in a first article published some time ago on Kto the genesis of this report. My stay on site was too brief to improvise me expert. But the indicators are not good, clearly. The survey published by the Jonathas Institute in May 2025 on Belgian anti -Semitism shows systematically red lights. Of the eight anti -Semitic prejudices tested, eight are held for real by more than a third of the Belgians. While 182,000 French people demonstrated against anti -Semitism, there were only 5,000 in Belgium. In the same line, several government officials refused to qualify Hamas as a terrorist organization, while other Nazified Israel. At the Free University of Brussels, the student collective “University of Popular Brussels” published messages such as “no Zionists in my neighborhood on Instagram, no neighborhood for Zionists”. One has the impression of seeing the same dynamics as in France, except in a much more unbridled way.
How do you explain the media and political silence after the publication of the hate writings of the writer Herman Brusselmans in the magazine There ?
The silence of the newspapers is not totally devoid of explanations. My meeting with Dorien de Meeûs, editor -in -chief for LIBER Belgiumand Jerémie Tojerow, responsible for Belgian Golem [association juive antiraciste] have highlighted the existence of two media spaces – French -speaking and Flemish – almost hermetic. Francophones are very little informed of Flemish news, and vice versa. Herman Brusselmans is famous on the Flemish side: the reciprocal is not true French -speaking side. The barriers are not only linguistic, they are still editorial and cultural, with in particular a Flemish relationship with black humor and the far right much more uninhibited. The Alost Festival which has seen anti -Semitic caricatures parade is a striking example. Besides, the magazine Therea platform that has published the incriminated remarks, is a journal all that is mainstream.
On the political side, there was, to my knowledge at least, that two public expressions of condemnation: that of Viviane Teitelbaum, senator member of the Reform movement (Political Party of Center-Droit) and Khalil Aouasti, member of the Socialist Party, who did not fail to harangu a minister in parliamentary committee for the laxity of his response to the case. Cowardice? Generalized indifference? Faintness ? Whatever the answer, there is a bad wind that blows in Belgium.
A year later, Brusselmans was acquitted in the name of freedom of expression. How do you demonstrate, without going into detail too much, this legal outcome?
One could imagine that this decision results from the singularity of Belgian law in matters of legislation of hatred. Unlike France, Belgium does not repress the expression per se hatred. The law consecrates in this sense the notion of special : the need, to condemn a hateful expression, to demonstrate a specific intention to encourage others to hatred or discrimination. To put it more suddenly, to say “dirty Jew” or “the sky is blue” is the same from the same from the legal point of view. Speaking of right to satire for Brusselmans, the prosecutor confirms this interpretation.
But the explanation is difficult. In this case, the acquittal decision was rendered by the loading room : an instance charged not to judge the case on the merits, but to establish the existence of charges – elements defined as sufficiently convincing to justify a referral later to a criminal court. The Chamber of charges is a kind of sorting station, evacuating the affairs for which a conviction seems unlikely before the background courts.
So, by acquitting Brusselmans, the room considered that its remarks [“J’ai envie d’enfoncer un couteau pointu dans la gorge de chaque Juif que je rencontre”] should not even be the subject of a substantive legal debate. No loads: circulate, nothing to do …
Does October 7 are enough to explain the explosion of anti-Semitism in Belgium?
If we speak of an explosion, October 7 actually played a catalyst role. UNIA figures, an interfedéral body to combat discrimination, are striking: 280 anti -Semitism reports for the year 2023, a record number. If we are interested in detail, the break is clear: between October 7 and December 7, we are talking about 66 clearly qualified reports of anti -Semitism. To use the words of Patrick Charlier, director of Unia, 66 in 2 months, that makes an average of 33 per month, against 4 to 5 reports per month last year …
The preponderance of anti -Zionism among Belgian opinion confirms this trend. According to the same survey published by the Jonathas Institute, 41 % of Belgians believe that “the Jews use the Holocaust to defend their interests”, and 35 % say that “the Jews make Palestinians undergo what the Germans have made them undergo”. These dynamics should not mining the existence of an old and structural anti -Semitism in Belgium.
You report two different reports to anti -Semitism, one Flemish, the other French -speaking. Where does this difference come from?
Belgian anti -Semitism is structured, according to Joël Kotek, in three layers. Primary anti -Semitism corresponds to traditional European anti -Semitism. Secondary anti -Semitism refers to a more pernicious process: the instrumentalization of the memory of the Shoah to disqualify the Jews of today. Said more simply, we do not forgive the Jews the Shoah, that is to say that they are accused of the guilt that it weighs on European consciousness. Israel plays a preponderant role in this perspective: the Jews also prove to be Nazis. So, one everywhere, ball in the center … tertiary anti -Semitism, finally, which is relying again on anti -Zionist rhetorics with electoral purposes. I would report on this last point the work of Hamza Esmili (The City of MuslimsAmsterdam editions, 2025) which underlines the preponderance of sociological and historical factors in the anti-Semitism of post-colonial immigration rather than theological (post-colonial immigration sees in the Jews the same who, for its part, succeeded).
The idea is as follows: in Flanders, primary and secondary anti -Semitism are more preponderant. For good reason, Flanders has a more marked collaborationist past. Brusselmans allows you to exorcise this shame.
“The Jews in Belgium are in a situation of fragility, of threat,” said Patrick Charlier, the director of the interfederal agency to combat discrimination. Is their situation even more “fragile” than in France or in other European countries?
The situation is difficult, that’s for sure. There are two major communities in Belgium: the secular Jewish community of Brussels and that more orthodox of Antwerp. They are small and, in particular for that of Brussels, seem to be disintegrated – even if we note a Jewish life among the fairly dynamic youth.
For example, I was struck by the quasi-inexistence of a Kasher restaurant in a European capital like Brussels; They are literally counted on the fingers of one hand. Far from being a trivial detail or the simple installment of my stomach, it is an element signifying on the vitality of a community. The Brusselmans affair has bruised the Jewish community, which was extremely shocked by the violence of the remarks made.
Have you encountered difficulties in conducting your investigation?
I would like to make sensationalism that I could not: my investigation went very well. All the actors encountered played the game of transparency. Simply note the total absence of response from the MRAX, Belgian anti -racist movement, which did not believe good to consider my various requests. Brussels, my beautifulsang Dick Annegarn: Let us hope that she can continue to be beautiful, with her Jews.
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