A recent survey has attempted to quantify what Belgians feel towards Jews, a small minority representing 0.3% of the country's population.
According to an IPSOS poll, 14% of Belgians express an aversion to Jews, twice as many as the French. This figure rises to 22% in Brussels, the capital, which is also the capital of European Union, where 11% of the population have sympathy for Hamas.
We suspected that anti-Semitism was widespread in Belgium, but this survey provides further confirmation, showing that the public attitude towards Jews has deteriorated even further since October 7, 2023. An increase in anti-Semitic acts has been denounced by Belgium's League against Anti-Semitism.
What is striking about the survey is that, for every question, anti-Semitic prejudice is much higher in Brussels than at national level. It happens that the population of the capital of Belgium and the EU is between 30% and 40% Muslim.
Thus, 16% of Brussels residents think there are too many Jews in Belgium (versus 11% nationally); 29% say that Jews are responsible for economic crises (14% nationally); 48% say that Jews feel superior to others (34% nationally), and 47% say that Jews do to Palestinians what Nazi Germany did to Jews (35% nationally).
In the country as a whole, 43% of Muslims think that Belgian Jews are not really Belgians like the other inhabitants of Belgium.
These figures are staggering. Many other signals testify to the sad reality that Jews are no longer safe in Brussels. Jewish community sites are protected by concrete bollards, cameras and security airlock entrances. While the Muslim hijab headscarf is ubiquitous in public areas of Brussels (worn by more than half the women in some neighborhoods), no Jewish yarmulke is seen on the streets there anymore. After an increase in incidents endangering Jewish teenagers taking the metro, a Jewish school near the Gare du Midi, a predominantly Muslim district, had to be moved. The compulsory Holocaust curriculum has not been taught in most Brussels schools for a long time now; teachers are afraid to broach the subject in classes where the majority of the pupils are Muslim. After October 7, on the campus of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Jewish students were molested and harassed.
Back in 2011, a study by Vrij Universiteit Brussels sociologist Mark Elchardus already showed that half of Brussels' Muslim students were anti-Semitic.
The rise in anti-Semitism, appears, in fact, to coincide with the growth in Muslim immigration, which accelerated from 2000 onwards. The political world behaved as if they were the three monkeys: did not see, did not hear, did not speak. At Holocaust commemorations, the authorities repeat with their hands over their hearts that anti-Semitism has no place in Belgium, while passively witnessing its rise without ever acknowledging it.
Since October, 7, the reactions from Belgium's political class have been overwhelmingly hostile to Israel and often tinged with anti-Semitism. From the Socialist Party, a member of parliament, formerly Minister of Defense, compared Israel's military response to Nazi crimes in an X post: "Gaza today is Warsaw yesterday."
The president of the Parliament, who liked the MP's post, refuses to call Hamas a terrorist organization. The Minister for Development Cooperation likens the State of Israel to the Third Reich. The Minister of Culture called for Israel's exclusion from the Eurovision song contest.
Even the Belgian Prime Minister, after his trip to Israel in November 2023, was congratulated by Hamas: "We appreciate the clear and bold positions of Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo". De Croo announced his resignation this week, following his party's disappointing results in the elections for both Belgium's Federal Parliament and the European Parliament.
These positions have often been taken to appeal to Muslim voters, all the more so in the run-up to Belgium's general election that took place on June 9, but in a veritable vicious circle, they further fuel the anti-Semitism of this electorate and beyond to a large section of the population.
The Muslim vote has become essential to the success of the left-wing parties, whose electoral weight in Brussels, as a result of immigration, has risen in 20 years, from 34% to 54%. Compared to the now hundreds of thousands of Muslim votes, those of the 30,000 Jews in Belgium, a genuine minority, do not carry much weight. Over the past 20 years, some of us have tried in vain to draw attention to this serious trend, which neither the media nor the political world has been willing to see.
Perhaps the heartbreaking testimonies of Brussels Jews that speak for themselves. A fellow countryman of mine confided:
"Having arrived 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 here. Today, I explain to my children that their future is not here, and that they must prepare to make their lives elsewhere."
Another fellow countryman, whose family left Turkey at the beginning of the 20th century and moved to Portugal after October 7, observes:
"Brussels is a territory lost to political calculations.... Unlike France, there are no real red lines. The atmosphere leaves no room for hope".
The fate of Belgian Jews seems to be sealed. These testimonies are worth every analysis. Belgium is gradually becoming free of Jews -- Judenrein -- while joyfully and conscientiously celebrating the high mass of a highly racist multiculturalism.
Alain Destexhe, Medical Doctor (MD), a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, is an Honorary Senator in Belgium, former secretary general of Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) and former president of the International Crisis Group. Author of Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century.
David