The umbrella group of Jewish organizations in Belgium, CCOJB, expressed dismay after the publication on a Flemish Education Ministry website of a caricature drawing comparisons between the fate of the Palestinian people and the Holocaust.
The caricature features a Jewish man impaled on the fence of a concentration camp next to a man wearing an Arab kefiyeh headdress, their limbs arranged in the form of a Nazi swastika. The caption “never again” appears above the image of the Jew and the words “over again!” are written at the Palestinian’s right foot.
It was drawn by Brazilian artist Carlos Latuff, who is known for his anti-Semitic and pro-Palestinian views in his artwork.
The caricature is part of a training exercise for teachers by the Education Ministry of the Flemish Region, one of three entities that make up federal Belgium, in the framework of its ‘’Special Committee for Remembrance Education.’’
In this exercise teachers are asked to analyze the caricature with one of three statements: “This is a Palestinian fleeing Jews;” “Jews want the entire area of Palestine back;” or “Jews call Palestine Israel.”
The educational material also includes a “role play” in which children are given a role as either a Palestinian or an Israeli. The Israelis are almost always depicted negatively, with the exception of an Israeli character with many Palestinian friends.
“You have sympathy for the radical group Hamas. You live in Gaza and go to work every day in Israel… the death of a Palestinian girl shot by Israeli soldiers in the school playground has shocked you deeply. Israel denies having shot the children, but according to representatives of the United Nations in Gaza everything indicates that she was killed by the Israelis,” describes the Palestinian cue in the role-play exercise.
''This caricature is undoubtedly unacceptable because it denies or minimizes the Holocaust of 6 million Jews by comparing it falsely to an event that is not at all comparable,’’ the CCOJB said in a statement.
''This comparison is outrageous, malicious and doesn’t correspond to reality. It is part of the false and defamatory propaganda against the Jewish people and the state of Israel led since fifty years by radical anti-Zionist groups.’’
The CCOJB urged the competent Flemish Education Ministry to conduct an investigation.
The group’s president, Maurice Sosnowski, said he was ‘’extremely worried by the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and in the world."
According to an annual report released last month by a monitoring group, the number of anti-Semitic attacks reported last year in Belgium was at its highest level since 2009.