Stab every Jew? Publisher says sorry

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In the face of an uproar and the threat of litigation, the Belgian magazine that published a call to “stab every Jew in the throat” has pulled the article.

Humo magazine at first refused to apologize, explaining that it “is certainly not an anti-Semitic magazine.”

The Brussels-based European Jewish Association called removal of the article, by Flemmish writer Herman Brusselmans, “a step in the right direction,” but said that the legal case against the writer, the magazine and the publisher would continue so that “justice is properly and meaningfully served.”

“The author has shown zero remorse for his ‘thought experiment’ of murdering any Jew he meets in the street,” said EJA chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin. “A strong, uncompromising response is absolutely necessary lest others think they can also call publicly for the mass murder of Jews.’

“The fact that they removed the article is essentially just stopping the bleeding,” Yohan Benizri, former president of the Belgian Federation of Jewish Organizations, told JNS, noting that the magazine is convinced this is appropriate satire. “A judge needs to rule on whether this is incitement to hatred and antisemitic hate speech.”

“I see an image of a crying and screaming Palestinian boy, frantically calling for his mother buried under the rubble, and I imagine that boy is my own son Roman and the mother my own girlfriend Lena, and I become so furious that I want to stab every Jew I encounter in the throat with a sharp knife,” Brusselmans’ article reads.

“Of course, you always have to remember: not every Jew is a murderous bastard, and to embody that thought, I imagine an elderly Jewish man shuffling through my street, dressed in a faded shirt, fake cotton pants, and old sandals, and I feel pity for him and almost tear up, but later I wish him to hell, and yes, that’s a mood swing, and my upcoming collection will unfortunately be full of them,” it continues.

In response to Brusselmans called his column “a thought exercise about how I would react if it were my loved ones who were affected.”

“In the conditional tense. That sentence about the sharp knife is purely figurative, to emphasize the message. And that falls under the right to freedom of expression,” he told the Flemish newspaper Nieuwsblad.

Between 40,000 and 50,000 Jews live in Belgium, mostly in Antwerp and Brussels.