CCOJB president Joel Rubinfeld described anti-Semitism as a daily experience of insults and aggressions… A number of years ago, the CCOJB president had challenged a former minister of foreign affairs, saying: “Why don’t you try walking down rue Neuve wearing a kippa?” This is a major pedestrian and commercial avenue in the centre of Brussels.
Very similar to the French Gayssot act (after the name of its promoter), the Belgian Moureaux act voted in 1981 is in fact almost never applied. What’s the point of lodging a complaint, when prosecution almost never follows?
Worse still, former minister Philippe Moureaux, who is today vice-president of the Belgian Socialist Party and burgermeister (mayor) of Molenbeek, made a revealing slip in an interview granted on 2 October to the weekly magazine Le Vif/L’Express, after some riots in his town: “When I was 20, I was a Marxist and no great fan of the right to be different. I have changed. And what led me to change was specifically the conversations that I had with the Jewish community. I am saddened today to see them refuse to Muslims that same right to be different.”
Joel Rubinfeld reacted to this statement saying: “I have to admit I don’t understand what Philippe Moureaux means when he speaks of a right to be different that Jews allegedly refuse to Muslims. What is this right that Jews are supposed to have enjoyed? What privileges have they benefited from and are refusing to their Muslim fellow citizens? And who among the representatives of the Jewish community has refused this alleged right to be different to the Muslim community of our country?”
“What are we to understand from the mayor of Molenbeek, if it is not that he is faulting Jews for the disastrous results of the integration policy that he has undertaken in his municipality, instilling in our Muslim fellow citizens the treacherous idea that the Jews are their adversaries on the path to successful integration, thus raising up one community against the other?”
The President of CCOJB also mentioned the pro-Palestinian demonstration organised in Brussels on 11 June 2009. 80 000 people marched in the streets to the cries of “Death to the Jews”, among others. Non of the three democratic parties who had called for this demonstration reacted nor apologised. Joel Rubinfeld noted that “the Jewish community has been sacrificed on the altar of electoral politics.”
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