Aalst parade features cross-dressing hassidim with big noses
The carnival in Aalst, Belgium, once again featured blatant antisemitic displays in its parade on Sunday.
Aalst lost its UNESCO honors last year because it refused to stop perpetuating negative stereotypes about Jews. It went even further with the displays this year, as a reaction to being stripped of its status.
Israeli Ambassador to Belgium Emmanuel Nahshon tweeted pictures of a woman dressed as a member of the SS, who he photographed at the parade. Another picture he took of a sign featured “Shlomo Shekelberg,” an Internet meme of a man with a kippah, beard and enormous nose rubbing his hands together deviously, with a red diagonal line across his image.
Nahshon wrote that he was at Aalst “because an Israeli ambassador is not afraid.
“I was there to see with my own eyes the mockery and scornful use of Jewish symbols, the costumes reminiscent of Nazi uniforms and all in the guise of an ‘amusing and satirical event,’” Nahshon tweeted.
“I am told that it will be worse in the evening. I hope the Belgian authorities deal with this antisemitic scum.”
The parade also featured a fake Western Wall, known by many non-Jews as the Wailing Wall, with the message: “Well, you would also complain if they’d cut your penis.”
Another fake Western Wall showed cartoons of hassidic men with exaggeratedly large noses, along with a bare-breasted woman wearing a shtreimel and peyot, saying “I’m just jealous” and “I don’t have a big nose.”
Some parade-goers were dressed as insects, with slogans implying that they are parasites, along with the fur-lined hassidic shtreimel hats and fake peyot. There were also clowns with shtreimels and peyot.
Among the displays at the parade were a float with Jesus on the cross and the message “don’t touch my Jew.”
One reveler held a sign with the “rules of the carnival,” including “no Jews,” “no joking with Jews,” “certainly not speaking the truth about the Jew” and “your drugs and black money will be for us.”
Others wore lampshades patterned like tallits on their heads.
There were also attendees in blue vests with the UNESCO logo and the message: “UNESCO puts an end to the Aalst carnival.”
The Aalst carnival has long been a site of bigoted displays in general, including participants in blackface and displays mocking Muslims; usually much of the imagery is specifically antisemitic. Last year, it included a float featuring oversized dolls of Jews with rats on their shoulders, holding banknotes. In 2013, JTA reported carnival revelers in Nazi uniforms held canisters labeled “Zyklon B” while walking with other participants dressed as concentration camp prisoners.
Aalst’s mayor removed the carnival from UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2019, in anticipation of the status being revoked due to his refusal to stop the antisemitic displays.
The American Jewish Committee’s Transatlantic Institute called on the EU to investigate
Belgium for violating the EU’s founding values of respect for human dignity and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities, among others. The AJC Transatlantic Institute said the EU should invoke Article 7 to suspend rights of a member state if it violates any of those rights.
Daniel Schwammenthal, director of the Brussels-based Transatlantic Institute, posited that “as the host of the EU institutions, Belgium has a particular responsibility to respect human dignity and human rights, including the rights of minorities.”
“With very few exceptions, Belgian political leaders have been inexplicably silent in the face of this shameful parade,” Schwammenthal added. “With rising violent antisemitism in Europe, public displays of anti-Jewish hatred should have long been tossed on the ash heap of history. In the city of Aalst, apparently, peddling stereotypes of Jews as vermin even deserved increased police protection. This parade was nothing short of an outrage and an offense to any civilized country.”
“It’s incomprehensible that 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, such vile displays of antisemitism were allowed to happen in the heart of Europe. The anti-Jewish costumes incited hatred, spread conspiracy theories, and ridiculed Jewish customs and traditions. With very few exceptions, Belgian political leaders have been inexplicably silent in the face of this shameful parade,” Schwammenthal said.
Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, called said the antisemitic tropes in the parade “are extremely offensive and abuse the power of free speech which is such an essential ingredient in any liberal democracy.”
Goldschmidt said that “it is simply not acceptable for world leaders such as the King of Belgium to declare ‘never again’ one week and then sit idly by when these symbols appear on their streets just weeks later.”
Though Belgium, with a population of 11 million, has around 30,000 Jews, the Jewish community did not demonstrate against the carnival, with a source saying they are worried about calling negative attention to themselves and possibly provoking violence by going against the dominant culture.
In addition, a legal fight against the parade would have been a challenge. According to Belgian law, one can only be indicted for racial incitement if he or she targeted and harmed a specific person.