Anti-Semitic Cartoon to be Removed from Textbooks in Belgium

An overtly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel comic featured in Belgian geography textbooks, which the International Legal Forum (ILF) first brought attention to, will now be removed from subsequent editions of the textbook. The victory comes several months following the International Legal Forum first bringing the Belgian government’s attention to the outrageous cartoon. The announcement that the cartoon would be removed followed an official probe, as well as a discussion with the book’s publisher, by the Belgian government.

The caricature itself, which was featured in a geography textbook aimed at Belgian teens of a high school age, featured an overweight Jew asleep in a bathtub near an impoverished Palestinian with an empty bucket. The implication of the cartoon, that Jews (depicted in an overtly stereotypical fashion) purposefully deprive Palestinians of necessities is particular insidious given its placement in a chapter dealing with water distribution between Israelis and Palestinians. More information about these forms of anti-Semitism, and others, can be found in the Louis D. Brandeis Center’s Fact Sheet on the Elements of Anti-Semitic Discourse. No comparable allegations are made against the Palestinians in the chapter, with only the Israelis being scapegoated.

ILF notified Belgium’s Education Minister not only due to the anti-Semitic nature of the cartoon, but also due to the fact that the anti-Semitic cartoon is also illegal as it, among other things, clearly violates the resolution adopted by the European Parliament on 1 June 2017, which calls on member states and their institutions to adopt and apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism.

In a response letter sent recently by Belgium’s Education Minister Hilde Crevits to the director of the ILF, attorney Yifa Segal, Crevits was informed that the publisher of the book had confirmed that the caricature would be removed from the next version of the book. She also mentions that the Flemish government determines the levels of achievement, but the choice of proper textbooks belongs to the individual schools themselves.