"In a letter to Belgian Prime Minister, Yves Leterme, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, expressed revulsion at "the repulsive manipulation of public opinion staged last Saturday in Nivelles near Brussels."
A group of Belgian self-proclaimed "Socialists", in ostensible Israeli army uniforms, descended from a jeep and other vehicles bearing Israeli flags to assault keffiyeh-bedecked local Arabs in the town's commercial centre.
Samuels described the scene as "barking orders while pushing elderly people to their knees, grabbing a baby from its carriage, the message was registered in the faces of innocent shopkeepers and passersby."
- See video '"Psychodrame Nakba" à Nivelles'
The Centre added, "Those Belgian onlookers, last Saturday, lost their innocence as they were mentally raped. They know that there are no Israeli military operations in their town, but they and their children will always remember the Star of David on the vehicles, the snatching of babies. The demons of medieval blood libels are, thereby, subliminally reinforced. The organizers will have succeeded in dramatically reigniting fear of their fellow Jewish citizens."
The letter continued, "Following the mayhem in which the 'soldiers' drove the 'Arabs' into the 'Bethlehem Deheishe Refugee Camp', the microphone was taken by Socialist City Councillor and former Defence Minister, André Flahaut. Under Palestinian banners, he drew parallels between the performance and Nazi atrocities against the Jews."
Samuels noted that "the same minister had, reportedly, excused the vandalism of the Anderlecht Holocaust Memorial as due to Israeli policy and, allegedly, proposed shooting down any American plane overflying Belgium en route to Iraq."
The Centre suggested that "Belgian politicians must be reminded of the short distance between Nivelles and Malines (Mechelen), the transit point for the deportation of Belgian Jewry to Auschwitz."
The letter also emphasized that "Saturday's street defamation of Israel was not only a disturbance to public order; it was a violation of Belgium's commitment to the OSCE Berlin Declaration (2004), and the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism's Working Definition of Antisemitism (2004), both of which include Holocaust revisionism and the demonization of the State of Israel, by analogy with Nazism, as incitement to contemporary Jew-hatred."
The Centre called on the Belgian government "to publicly denounce such group libel, prohibit any repetition and to condemn the behaviour of Councillor Flahaut and his co-speaker, Ecologist Federal Deputy Thérèse Snoy."
"Mr Prime Minister, pardon our astonishment that of all countries, such a provocation was organized in Belgium – hardly the place nor the time to import a conflict in which peacemakers are focussed upon a two-state solution," concluded Samuels."
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