“This incitement to action endorsed by the co-president of Ecolo is the culmination of an anti-Semitic shift that has been observed for several years in the leadership of the Green party,” the League said in a statement, pointing in particular to the election in 2019 of a member of parliament who is the instigator in Belgium of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement aimed at boycotting the State of Israel.
A Belgian Green MP has been accused of inciting antisemitism after sharing a picture accompanied by a song on Instagram.
The Belgian League Against Antisemitism (LBCA) on Wednesday denounced a photo shared by the French-speaking Green party’s co-chair Rajae Maouane on the Instagram network accompanied by a song at a time when tension between Israelis and Palestinians is at its highest. It showed a Palestinian fighter twirling a slingshot. The accompanying song is “Wein Al Malayeen”, a hit by Lebanese singer Julia Boutros, who is reputed to be close to Hezbollah, and who incites the Arab people to armed struggle against the “sons of Zion.’’
According to LBCA, the Greens are inciting “anti-Semitic hatred”. “This incitement to action endorsed by the co-president of Ecolo is the culmination of an anti-Semitic shift that has been observed for several years in the leadership of the Green party,” the League said in a statement, pointing in particular to the election in 2019 of a member of parliament who is the instigator in Belgium of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement aimed at boycotting the State of Israel.
The League called on the party to exclude Maouane from its ranks and called on the democratic parties to “strongly condemn these extremely dangerous and potentially criminal excesses of a party that is a member of the government coalition”.
The woman contested the accusation, which she said ran counter to her political and associative commitment. “I regret that a fight as essential and topical as that against anti-Semitism can be used to disqualify and smear those who call for justice and international law to put an end to this conflict that has lasted too long,” she said.