August 2, 2019

(JTA) – Representatives of Flemish Jews filed a police complaint after a Belgian journalist joked about Jews’ noses and accused Israelis of stealing Palestinian land.

The reference to Jewish noses appears in a July 27 column by Dimitri Verhulst the left-leaning Belgian daily De Morgen. Its title, “There is no promised land, only stolen land,” was a paraphrase of a quote attributed to the late French-Jewish singer Serge Gainsbourg.

Verhulst quotes the singer as saying: “Being Jewish is not a religion, no God would give creatures such an ugly nose.” The quote attributed to Gainsbourg speaks neither of God nor ugliness, reading: “Being Jewish is not a religion. No religion makes you grow such a nose.”

The column begins with the words: “Because God has His favorites and they have their privileges, Palestinians were driven out of their homes in 1948 to make place for God’s favorites.” He also accuses Israel of “murdering” 10,000 Palestinians over the past 17 years and writes that “talking to the Chosen is difficult” because they accuse him unjustly, he wrote, of racism for his anti-Israel views.

The Forum of Jewish Organizations of Belgium’s Flemish region called these statements “rabid anti-Semitism” in a statement Friday about the complaint.

Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs also condemned the column in an op-ed he published Friday in the ND newspaper, calling it “pure anti-Semitism” and adding he is “concerned” that it could be published in a mainstream newspaper.

In 2016, Belgian Jews complained after De Morgen interviewed a Holocaust denier.

(JTA) – Jordan’s religion minister, Abed al Nasr abu Bassel, ordered a gravesite holy to Jews closed following prayers there.

The closure Friday of the presumed gravesite of Aharon the Cohen, a biblocal figure who according to the Torah had acted as an aide and spokesperson to Moses, followed a mass prayer there earlier this week by 500 pilgrims from Israel at the gravesite, located about 100 miles north of Eilat.

A statement by the ministry called the pilgrimage “illegal” and stated that the Jordanians responsible for allowing pilgrims access to the site will be “held accountable,” Ynet reported Friday.

(JTA) — A Jewish cemetery was vandalized in a village in the Czech Republic, where unidentified perpetrators smashed at least one headstone and etched obscene drawing on several others.

Police have no suspects in custody in connection with last week’s incident in Osoblaha in a northeastern district of the Central European country.

In addition to toppling and smashing at least one headstone, the perpetrators also drew male genitals on one headstone and a smiley face on another, the Coordination Forum For Countering Antisemitism reported on its website Wednesday.

Anti-Semitic violence and vandalism is commonplace across Eastern Europe but relatively rare in the Czech Republic.

Polls conducted in that country consistently suggest that anti-Semitic sentiments are significantly less prevalent there than in neighboring countries.

In a 2015 survey of 19 countries conducted by the Anti-Defamation League, 13 percent of Czech respondents displayed what ADL considered anti-Semitic sentiments. That figure was the lowest in Eastern Europe, far behind the regional average of 34 percent.