October 7 & today · Belgium · 2023–present
Popular anti-Jewish caricature, Israel-related collective guilt and Islamist radicalization combined in Belgium’s post-October 7 insecurity.
Explore BelgiumPublished by WTJPublication updated
2023–present
October 7 & today · October 7 & today
Popular anti-Jewish caricature, Israel-related collective guilt and Islamist radicalization combined in Belgium’s post-October 7 insecurity.
An accusation follows a passer-by
Belgium’s Jewish community monitor records a passer-by subjected to abuse about Israel and synagogues marked with accusations of child murder. A person walking down a street, or a building used for worship, had been turned into a stand-in for a foreign government.
The change became visible soon after October 7. Unia, Belgium’s equality body, received far more conflict-related reports than before, many explicitly referring to Jewish origin. The accusation did not wait for the person being targeted to express any political view.
The accusation moves from caricature to politics
Belgium’s occupation history involved persecution, collaboration and resistance. Older antisemitic caricatures also remained publicly usable: Aalst Carnival lost UNESCO recognition in 2019 over recurring racist and anti-Jewish representations. The cultural material was already present before October 7.
Afterward, community monitoring recorded synagogues marked with child-murderer accusations and Jews abused over Israel. These are concrete transfers of a political accusation onto Jews, echoing older images of collective cruelty. OCAM separately observed increased left-extremist activity around Gaza, while VSSE documented jihadist recruitment and Brotherhood influence-seeking through associations. Those findings identify several channels; they do not make every left-wing activist part of a formal Islamist alliance. The connection is how existing stereotypes, political legitimation and extremist mobilization can make hostility to local Jews more acceptable and more threatening.
The imagery was already there
In 2019, UNESCO removed Aalst Carnival from its heritage list over recurring racist and anti-Jewish representations. That controversy came years before October 7. It showed that degrading images of Jews already had a place in Belgian popular culture.
The later conflict did not create those stereotypes. It gave some of them a new political setting, while jihadist propaganda presented another threat. Belgian intelligence described arrests over planned violence against Antwerp Jews in late 2024. Different routes of hostility were reaching the same community, whose history and present life were too often reduced to someone else’s enemy image.