Belgium | First One Through

The annual carnival in Aalst, Belgium will take place today and will likely feature Jews in antisemitic poses as it has in years past. Event organizers were said to have handed out “rabbi kits” with over-sized noses, beards, sidelocks and black hats. Last year’s event featured Orthodox Jews sitting on piles of money which even offended UNESCO (no easy feat) so the organization withdrew the parade from its heritage list.

A parade float at the Aalst Carnival in Belgium featuring caricatures of Orthodox Jews atop money bags, March 3, 2019. (Courtesy of FJO, via JTA)

Aalst Mayor Christoph D’Haese said it is “unavoidable” that Jews will be mocked again this year, saying “we are neither antisemitic nor racist. All those who support this [attack on the parade] are acting in bad faith. Aalst will always remain the capital of mockery and satire.” In other words, stop being so sensitive and enjoy the joke. It’s the larger than life form of French magazine Charlie Hebdo walking down the street. A bit of light fun. A poke. A zinger. It’s not really antisemitic. It’s a light punch in the arm or tweak on the cheek. Shame on you Jews for missing the bigger picture and being offended.

The government of Belgium did not weigh in on the parade. The prime minister, Sophie Wilmes, said it was an “internal affair.”

But the government of Belgium did weigh on another zinger to the Jewish and Muslim community at the end of 2018 when it banned the production of kosher and halal meat.

The government felt that it was inhumane to slaughter an animal while it was conscious, which is required for the production of kosher and halal meats. The government passed a law which went into effect in 2019 that animals be stunned first before killed. That such edict only and directly impacted the Jewish and Muslim communities was considered beside the point. That little zinger to the animal was deemed essential.

The United Nations didn’t weigh in. The world didn’t pause on the cause.

Because for them, animal rights are human rights, just like free speech. If Jews and Muslims are offended, then they must be the parties with the problem.

One sting is a small zinger which makes no difference (free speech) and one which makes all of the difference (animal rights). To Belgians anyway.

Or maybe its actually the opposite; it’s the key to understanding the European approach to antisemitism: a sting makes the slaughter – of Jews or animals – kosher. Antisemitism only exists when it goes for the jugular outright.

Belgian authorities have made clear that the country’s culture demands the stunning of Jews and Muslims, and if they don’t like or appreciate the environment they are free to leave the country.

In 1948, after the Holocaust of the Jews in Europe, there were 34 countries with over 25,000 Jews. Today, there are only 17. Expect that number to drop to 16 very soon, as the Jews of Belgium take flight, as they recognize a desensitized environment better than anyone.

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The morning of May 29, 2018 in Belgium was shattered by violence. Three people were killed in the city of Liege, including two police officers.

And that’s all that CNN would tell its readers.

Police and ambulance are seen at the site where a gunman shot dead three people, two of them policemen, before being killed by elite officers, in the eastern Belgian city of Liege on May 29, 2018. – The shooting occurred around 10:30am (0830 GMT) on a major artery in the city close to a high school. “We don’t know anything yet,” the spokeswoman for the Liege prosecutors office, told AFP when asked about the shooter’s motives. (Photo by JOHN THYS / AFP) (Photo credit should read JOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images)

It would not say that the attacker was a male, was heard shouting “Allahu Akbar,” that he had recently been released from jail, or that the attack was being investigated as terrorism. It did not report that the murdered police officers were women.

Was this select telling of #AlternativeFacts or simply terrible reporting?

The Guardian wrote about basic facts in the story, even if it could not report on it from its own sources.

“La Libre Belgique newspaper quoted a police source as saying the gunman shouted Allahu Akbar – “God is greatest” in Arabic – and had taken a woman hostage at some point in the attack.

The national anti-terrorist crisis centre, which interior minister Jan Jambon said was monitoring the situation, said terrorism could not be excluded as a motive though it was also looking into other possible reasons. “It is one of the questions on the table, but for the moment all scenarios are open,” a spokesman for the crisis centre said.”

SkyNews reported on the man’s name in addition to his history of crimes. Perhaps they do not mind giving the killer “fame” for his actions.

The Jerusalem Post went into much detail, including the stabbing murder of the two policewomen. It also detailed the history of Islamic radicalism in Belgium, assuming that the latest act was indeed Islamic terrorism:

“A Brussels-based Islamic State cell was involved in attacks on Paris in 2015 that killed 130 people and on Brussels in 2016 in which 32 died. The Brussels IS cell had links to militants in Verviers, another industrial town close to Liege, where in early 2015 police raided a safe house and killed two men who had returned from fighting with radical Islamists in Syria.

European authorities are deeply concerned about the risks of petty criminals, including those not from Muslim backgrounds, being inspired to Islamist violence while incarcerated.”

Reuters also made all of the above facts clear, including putting ‘Terrorist” in the headline of its report.

Yet CNN remained mum on all of these details.

Does CNN have fewer reporters in Belgium than media outlets in the UK or Israel? Was the best journalism it could muster was “Liege is Belgium’s third-largest city, after Brussels and Antwerp, according to the national tourist office. For centuries, it has been an important cultural and industrial center for the country.” Well, thanks so much for the thorough news analysis. Your fifth grade teachers would be very impressed.

People are getting more of their news from mobile devices than ever before, and relying on friends to source more of the worthwhile news sources, according to Pew Research. But news outlets still account for the origination of the stories.

If current trends continue, CNN will disappear faster than the facts it publishes.

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