“These slogans have nothing to do with freedom of speech. They are calls for hatred. It is shameful and worrying,” said Jewish community leader Yohan Benizri.
The Coordinating Committee of Belgian Jewish Organisations (CCOJB), the country’s European Jewish Congress affiliate, expressed shock that dozens of demonstrators were shouting a slogan in Arabic calling for “war against the Jews” in a protest against Israeli “annexation of occupied territory.”
The slogan about Khaybar, located in modern-day Saudi Arabia, refers to a Muslim massacre of Jews in the seventh century.
The protest, in Brussels on Sunday, was ostensibly against Israel’s plan for sovereignty over Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, the biblical Jewish homeland.