A Belgian city has defended as “just fun” a carnival featuring caricatures of Orthodox Jews wearing huge fur hats, long fake noses and ant costumes.
Israel, Jewish groups and Belgian Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès were among many who strongly condemned the costumes in Sunday’s parade in Aalst.
Some critics said likening Jews to ants was similar to Nazi anti-Semitism, which persecuted Jews as “vermin”.
The Aalst mayor’s spokesman told the BBC “it’s our humour… just fun”.
Peter Van den Bossche said “there isn’t a movement behind it” and “we don’t wish harm to anyone”.
“It’s our parade, our humour, people can do whatever they want,” he said. “It’s a weekend of freedom of speech.”
Image copyrightAFPImage captionCritics called this mockery of Orthodox Jews and the Western Wall anti-Semitic
Aalst lies 31km (19 miles) northwest of Brussels – the heart of the EU – and is run by the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), a nationalist party pushing for Flanders independence.
The city drew much criticism for parading caricature Jews last year – so much so that it was dropped from Unesco’s cultural heritage list in December. After the outcry, Aalst itself had asked to be taken off the list.
Unesco – the UN’s educational and cultural agency – was also satirised in the parade on Sunday.
Other floats mocked UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Brexit, climate activist Greta Thunberg, and Jesus Christ on the cross.
There were also people parading in Nazi SS uniform – despite the fact that, in World War Two, the Nazis deported about 25,000 Jews from occupied Belgium to the Auschwitz death camp, where most were murdered.
Image copyrightREUTERSImage captionAalst mocks Brexit, with a float featuring Boris Johnson and the Queen
In Sunday’s parade some caricature Jews posed with a mock-up of the Western Wall – often called Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, a holy site for Jews. It was labelled “the wailing ant”, in Dutch “de klaugmier”. The Dutch for “wailing wall” is “klaagmuur”.
“This doesn’t encourage anti-Semitism; the reaction last year was over the top,” Mr Van den Bossche said. “Two hundred percent it’s not anti-Semitic.”
Image copyrightEVN/RTBFImage captionMock-Nazis parading in Aalst – in a country that was terrorised by the Nazis
He underlined that the carnival themes were based on news events as seen in Aalst – hence the mockery of Unesco.
When asked about the Nazi characters in Sunday’s carnival, he said: “Those symbols – normally we don’t accept that, we condemn that.
“We say: what can we do about it? Put people in prison? No.”
Israel’s foreign ministry director-general Yuval Rotem tweeted that Aalst had indulged in “despicable anti-Semitic exhibitions”.
Belgian PM Sophie Wilmès said the pretend Jews in the Aalst parade “harm our values and our country’s reputation”.
“The use of stereotypes stigmatising communities and groups based on their origins leads to divisions and endangers our togetherness,” she said.
Joël Rubinfeld, head of the Belgian League against anti-Semitism, said: “It is sad, deplorable, shameful that 50 persons are tainting an entire carnival, a popular celebration. It gives a catastrophic image of the city of Aalst and also of our country abroad.”
Of note. Understand from one of my readers that the mayor is also a member of parliament of a right-wing Flemish nationalist party:
The famed Belgian Carnival town of Aalst wants to renounce its place on the U.N. cultural heritage list, saying it is sick of widespread complaints that this spring’s edition contained blatant anti-Semitism.
Town officials say the float objected to, with stereotypical depictions of hook-nosed Jews sitting on piles of money, was trying to make a joke and they contend no one should try to muzzle humor of any kind during the three-day Carnival.
Aalst mayor Christoph D’Haese said Sunday that city officials “have had it a bit with the grotesque complaints and Aalst will renounce its UNESCO recognition.”
UNESCO, Jewish groups and the European Union have condemned the float as anti-Semitic, with the EU saying it conjured up visions of the 1930s.
UNESCO already was planning to consider at its Dec. 9-14 meeting in Bogota, Colombia, whether to kick Aalst off the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
“It was clear that we had to go, so we kept the honor to ourselves,” D’Haese told VTM network.
Aalst is one of Europe’s most famous Carnivals and it is a celebration of unbridled, no-holds-barred humor and satire. Politicians, religious leaders and the rich and famous are relentlessly ridiculed during the three-day festival ahead of Roman Catholic Lent.
Imposing limits on that would take away the essence of the town’s Carnival, said D’Haese, who has seen revelers impersonating leaders of his Flemish nationalist N-VA party leadership go around in Nazi uniforms.
For him, it is the be-all, end-all of Aalst Carnival, in which a laugh trumps ethical concerns. The parade of floats draws some 100,000 visitors every year to the city close to Brussels. Most often it goes off without a hitch.
After the outrage in early March, D’Haese claimed city elders reached out to Belgium’s “anti-discrimination center and several Jewish organizations, for whom it will never be enough.”
Hans Knoop of the Belgian Forum of Jewish Organizations told The Associated Press that the mayor had not been cooperative in discussing the issue.
And Knoop warned that renouncing the UNESCO cultural heritage tag should not open the way for more similar displays at the festival in late February.
“They are not at liberty to spew any more anti-Semitic dirt,” he said. “We will keep a close eye on Aalst.”
He insisted there are merry Carnivals around the world without a hint of racism or anti-Semitism.
D’Haese said it would be “unavoidable” that there would be Jewish ridicule at the next edition. He has said it was not for him to police humor.
“We are on a very dangerous slippery slope when people will be able to decide what can be laughed at,” he said.
A decision by UNESCO to remove Aalst would be a first since the 2003 convention that created the cultural heritage label.
The Aalst Carnival has been on the list since 2010.
Now, D’Haese said, “I want to give Aalst Carnival back to Aalst.”
Image copyrightAFP
Image copyrightEVN/RTBF
Multicultural Meanderings 