The Belgian Jewish community paid tribute to the memory of the 17 people killed in the terrorist attacks last week in Paris, including four Jews murdered by an Islamist terrorist in a kosher supermarket two days after an attack against a French magazine, during an emotional ceremony Wednesday night at the Maale synagogue in Brussels.
Among the 300 people who attended the ceremony were France’s ambassador to Belgium, Bernard Valero, the deputy head of the Israeli embassy, Belgian politicians, several Jewish community leaders as well as the representatives of the Muslim Executive in Belgium.
‘’Belgium without the Jewish community would not be Belgium,’’ declared Armand De Decker, Mayor of Uccle and a Minister of State, adapting French Prime Minister Manul Valls’statement that ‘’France woould not be France without the Jews.’’
Rabbi Shmuel Pinson of the Maale synagogue, who attended Tuesday’s funerals of the four Jews in Jerusalem, said : ‘’What touched my profoundly in this difficult moment was the fact that I didn’t hear any call for revenge or any appeal to hatred.’’
Simon Bretholz of ‘’Belgium stand with Israel’’, the organizer of the ceremony, said it is unacceptable that life of Jews are threatened because of the importation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stressing that the border line between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism ‘’is very thin.’’
Armand De Decker, Minister of State and Mayor of Uccle, a Brussels commune where many Belgian Jews live, urged firmness to prevent attacks against democratic values. He said the Belgfian government should adopt a ‘’war budget’’ which would give the Justice, Defense and Interior ministries as well as police all necessary means’’ to be totally efficient against terrorism.
All speakers reminded that several months ago four people were killed, also by an Islamist gunman, at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.
While in France the government announced that around 5,000 police officers would protect Jewsh schools and synagogues, the Mayor of Forest, another Brussels commune where the Maale synagogue is located, said the city’s mayors urged additional police forces and eventually also military to assume the security of Jewish institutions.
But like in France and in some other European countries, Jews in Belgium are questioning their future in the country. ‘’A growing number of Jews here wonder whether there is a future for their children,’’ said Joel Rubinfeld, President of the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism, who urged the Belgian authorities to make the fight against anti-Semitism a ‘’national cause.’’
About 40,000 Jews live in Belgium.
‘’France is at war against hatred, racism, anti-Semitism, jihadism, fundamentalism and radical Islam,’’ stressed French Ambassador Bernard Valero who recalled the French government’s pledge to protect the Jewish community of France, the largest in Europe and the third largest in the world after Israel and the US.
Eighteen candles were lit in memory of the 17 people killed in Paris. The 18th was lit in memory of all victims of the scourge of terrorism, before Rabbi Pinson recited the prayers El Mole Rahamim and Kaddish.
The ceremony ended with the national anthems of France, Belgium and Israel.