progress <\/a>in recent years in coming to terms with the Holocaust-era complicity of its authorities and population. Surely, I thought, Descheemaeker would not get support and praise from a prestigious Catholic school\u00a0there.<\/p>\nMy first surprise was the reply I received from the school to my query over Descheemaeker. Yes, confirmed the school director\u00a0Paul Vanthournout\u00a0\u2013 \u201cwe are proud of Luc Descheemaeker,\u201d though not, per se, over his winning the award in Iran or his cartoons, he said. Vanthournout declined to comment on these activities, which he said had nothing to do with Descheemaeker\u2019s teaching position, but assured me that Descheemaeker \u201cis not an anti-Semite.\u201d<\/p>\n
As proof, the school director cited an award that Descheemaeker won in 2002 from Belgium’s\u00a0Queen Paola for staging a\u00a0student show based on Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust memoir\u00a0\u201cMaus.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wanted to see whether the school can get away with defending the maker of blatant anti-Semitic imagery by claiming to be neutral on its celebrated teacher\u2019s extracurricular activities. So I repeatedly queried the board of education, the royal house,\u00a0the Queen Paola Foundation, the municipality where the school is located and Belgium\u2019s federal center against discrimination. I received one written response, from the foundation, saying it had no comment for me.<\/p>\n
This see-no-evil approach from government offices in a country whose leaders often declare a zero-tolerance attitude to anti-Semitism surprised me. But the real shock was the response from the Belgian media to JTA\u2019s coverage of the affair.<\/p>\n
De Morgen, one of Belgium\u2019s largest and best-respected dailies, ran an article that omitted reference to Descheemaeker\u2019s caricatures of Jews. It described the Iranian competition as a \u201ccontroversial\u201d affair \u201cthemed on the Holocaust,\u201d which the paper said was instituted as a statement about freedom of expression following the publication of insulting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark.<\/p>\n
(UNESCO, the cultural arm of the United Nations, had called the contest “a mockery of the genocide of the Jewish people.”)<\/p>\n
Descheemaeker, who is described in the paper as an internationally acclaimed caricaturist, is quoted as saying in reaction to the uproar created by his work: \u201cThere is still such a thing as freedom of expression.\u201d<\/p>\n
Knack, a popular news site, took the same editorial line.<\/p>\n
(Descheemaeker did not respond to JTA requests for an interview sent through his school, on social media and via email.)<\/span><\/p>\nConfused, I reached out to Joel Rubinfeld, founder of the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism and former president of the CCOJB umbrella group of French-speaking Belgian Jewish communities. I wanted to know whether Belgian education officials were more tolerant of expressions of anti-Semitism than their counterparts from other Western European countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a problem,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve encountered a number of cases where schools did not take the necessary measures when Jewish pupils were targeted in anti-Semitic bullying, for example.\u201d<\/p>\n
A teacher who last year told a Jewish high school student, \u201cWe should put you all on freight wagons,\u201d was allowed to keep his job following an internal inquiry. It ended with him apologizing while denying any anti-Semitic intent in the first place.<\/p>\n
Cases involving anti-Semitic\u00a0abuse among students are regularly\u00a0ignored\u00a0<\/a>at Belgian schools, \u201cwhich don\u2019t apply the measures necessary to make these cases stop,\u201d Rubinfeld said.<\/p>\nOne student was forced to leave his public school and was enrolled in a private Jewish one last year following harassment, which included a threat to \u201cbreak his skull\u201d if he showed support for Israel. Also last year, the Belgian media reported on the online shaming by classmates of a pro-Israel high school student. He\u00a0also left the public education system for a Jewish school.<\/p>\n
As Belgian Jews continue to grapple with the anti-Semitism problem in their country — in 2014, a suspected jihadist was arrested for the shooting deaths of\u00a0four people at the Jewish museum in Brussels — a growing number are deciding to look for a new home.<\/p>\n
Last year, 287 Jews immigrated to Israel from Belgium, which has a Jewish population of about 40,000. It was the highest figure recorded in a decade. From 2010 to 2015, an average of 234 Belgian Jews made aliyah annually \u2014 a 56 percent increase over the annual average of 133 new arrivals from Belgium in 2005-2009, according to Israeli government data.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Belgium, the choice for Jews is often between abuse or ghettoization,\u201d Rubinfeld said. \u201cIt\u2019s not surprising that a growing number of Belgian Jews are finding alternatives to both.\u201d<\/p>\n
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