Following months of outrage over an anti-Semitic float included in a popular Belgian carnival, UNESCO has severed ties with the festival, which the cultural arm of the U.N. added to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2010. In March, the Aalst Carnival included a parade float featuring Jews with hooked noses and side-curls perched atop…
(JTA) — Sophie Wilmes is the first woman and the first Jewish person to become the prime minister of Belgium. Wilmes, a mother of four from the Brussels region, replaced Charles Michel on Sunday in the top post. The centrist politician will head a caretaker government during negotiations on the formation of a coalition, which…
(JTA) — The Belgian state’s watchdog on racism has come out with its verdict on a parade float from earlier this year that was slammed as anti-Semitic: It was anti-Semitic, but its creators were not intentionally racist. The report released Thursday by the Inter-Federal Equal Opportunities Center, or UNIA, recommends clearing the Aalst float creators of…
As Europe remembers the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II, the history of the Holocaust remains contested and challenged. Many Europeans are still reluctant to fully own their past. In Poland, despite ample evidence of Polish collaboration with the Nazis, a recent law forbade linking the term “Polish” to concentration camps or…
JTA — Jewish community leaders in Belgium protested a local politician’s placing of a swastika painting titled “God created A. Hitler” in the window display of an art gallery in Brussels. The painting by Fatmir Limani, an artist and the Socialist Party alderman in charge of cultural affairs in the Brussels-area municipality of Koekelberg, is…
(JTA) — A Belgian government-recognized organization caring for people with hearing impairments defended the inclusion in its sign language dictionary of a hooked nose gesture for the word “Jew.” The Flemish Sign Language Center offered the defense in a statement Wednesday, following protests about the gesture by the European Jewish Association over its including in…
(JTA) — A non-Jewish Arab man wearing a kippah and carrying several concealed knives was intercepted by guards attempting to enter an Antwerp synagogue. The 34-year-old Iraqi citizen was questioned by guards when he tried to enter the Romi Goldmuntz Synagoge in the Belgian city on Monday, during the holiday of Shavuot, the Joodse Actueel…
(JTA) — Prosecutors in Belgium dropped criminal complaints against a Turkish café owner who put up a sign banning Jews. A café in the town of Saint-Nicolas had displayed a sign saying dogs are welcome at his business, “but Jews are not.” The La Dernière Heure newspaper on Friday reported that the Prosecutor’s Office in…
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