JNS
Attacks reported in Brussels, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Belgium, from synagogue desecration to street assaults.
German and Belgian authorities on Wednesday sharply protested the decision of organizers of a classical music festival in Belgium to cancel a concert by the Munich Philharmonic because its conductor is Israeli.
The cancellation at the Ghent Festival of Flanders came amid a wave of boycott actions, violent attacks and other attempts to isolate Israelis and Jews in Europe because of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza.
The incidents included the assault of a Jewish man in Marseille by an assailant who shouted at him, “Free Palestine, f**k Israel,” and the smearing of excrement on a synagogue and a Jewish nursery in London on Thursday. In Italy, an Israeli woman and her American husband were chased down a Venice street by 12 Arabs who shouted “Free Palestine” at them.
In a statement announcing the concert cancellation, organizers said that the positions of the Munich Philharmonic’s Israeli conductor, Lahav Shani, “vis-à-vis the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv are unclear.”
German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media Wolfram Weimer called the cancellation “pure antisemitism” and argued that, under the guise of criticism of Israel, the festival was enforcing a cultural boycott, something that can be illegal in Germany.
“This is an attack on the very foundations of our culture. If German orchestras and Jewish artists are collectively excluded, a red line has been crossed,” he said.
Weimer stressed that the Munich Philharmonic is “a flagship of German culture” and warned that European stages must not become “places where antisemites dictate the program.”
The Forum of Jewish Organizations of Flanders, the region in Belgium where Ghent is located, also condemned the cancellation, saying it “evokes painful memories of periods when Jews were boycotted and excluded worldwide.”
The organizers’ stated reason for canceling the concert is “not an argument, but a political pretext that masks antisemitism and justifies discrimination. Shani is being excluded because of who he is, not because of what he does. Systematically banning artists based on their origins is discriminatory, morally unacceptable and sets a dangerous precedent, the forum said in a statement on Thursday.
Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter said in a statement on Wednesday: “I cannot comprehend the festival’s decision.” His city and he “stand firmly behind the Philharmonic and Lahav Shani,” the mayor wrote.
In the Brussels area, “Death to Jews” was painted on a road in the affluent suburb of Uccle, where many Jews live. The mayor of Uccle, Boris Dilliès, condemned the act, calling it “unacceptable” and adding that the incident was the subject of a police investigation, the European Jewish Press reported on Thursday.
The cancellation in Belgium follows the cancellation of three universities in the Netherlands of invitations to host an Israeli physician, Dr. Amit Frenkel, head of intensive care at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva, for training on treating victims of multi-casualty events, including terrorist attacks.
‘Institutions that legitimize anti-Zionist hatred’
The incident in Venice happened on Monday night, the RAI news agency reported on Thursday. A dozen Arab men accosted the Jewish couple, recognizable for their Haredi attire, on a street and shouted antisemitic insults at them, including pro-Palestinian slogans. One of the perpetrators allegedly used a dog to intimidate the couple. Police are working to identify the perpetrators of the attack on the couple.
Walker Meghnagi, president of the Milan Jewish Community, said in a statement on Thursday that, beyond the perpetrators, those responsible for Monday’s incident and others like it were “institutions that legitimize anti-Zionist hatred,” including those that have hosted Francesca Albanese, the U.N. rapporteur on Palestinians, whose statements have been widely condemned as antisemitic.
“Giving these individuals a podium without pushback makes those hosting them complicit in the spread of hatred and thus in the daily attacks Jews in Italy suffer,” Meghnagi said.
Separately, Marseille in France saw a spate of antisemitic incidents last week, CRIF, the umbrella group of French-Jewish communities, said in a statement.
In the most severe incident, a man shouted “Dirty Zionists” and “f**k you, Israelis” at members of the Jewish community near a synagogue, and then assaulted a Jewish person there. In two separate incidents, a woman was accosted by a man who called her “Dirty Jew” as she was leaving a synagogue, and a rabbi later experienced the same form of abuse. Signs commemorating Ilan Halimi, a man who was murdered in 2006 because he was Jewish, were torn down.
“These acts are not isolated incidents, but symptoms of a deteriorating atmosphere that is becoming alarmingly prevalent,” CRIF Marseille- Provence said in a statement.
The incident in London’s Golders Green neighborhood, where a synagogue and an adjoining Jewish children’s nursery were daubed with excrement in the early hours of Thursday morning, was the eighth recorded attack in about a week, the Shomrim Jewish security group said in a statement. One of the previous incidents involved a man who shouted abuse at school children on Finchley Road.
A Shomrim spokesperson called the excrement desecration “a vile and deliberate and premeditated act of antisemitism.”
Sharon Klaff, a Jewish mother of two who lives in the area and was assaulted in 2018 during a pro-Israel rally in London, told JNS on Thursday that “there’s an atmosphere of fear in the U.K. not only about street violence against Jews and others, but also about speaking honestly about what’s causing it.”
She was referencing arrests in the United Kingdom in recent months under the Labour government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer of people who criticized on social media immigrants and other groups and policies favored by many progressives.
