Chanan Hertzberger, Chairman of the Central Jewish Committee (CJO), said in a statement: “The antisemitic hate perpetuated by Brusselmans was cross-border, aided and abbetted by Humo magazine who acted as the courier to many thousands of readers in Holland.”
‘Humo is sold and read in Netherlands and therefore liable’.
Humo Magazine, and its writer Herman Brusselmans, already subject to ongoing legal proceedings for -for ”inciting hatred against Jews” in Belgium, are now facing the same pressures in the Netherlands after the principal body representing Dutch Jewry – the Central Jewish Committee (CJO) together with the Brussels based European Jewish Association (EJA) announced that they have started legal proceedings in Holland.
In a Humo article published in August, Herman Brusselmans wrote the following: “I see an image of a screaming Palestinian boy that is crying inconsolably for his mother who is lying under the rubble, and I imagine that the boy is my own son Roman, and the mother is my own girlfriend Lena, and I become so enraged that I want to ram a pointed knife straight into the throat of every Jew I meet.”
The article, despite horrified objections by Jews in Belgium, and indeed across the world, was allowed to remain on Humo pages, and in fact was only retracted under duress and acres of negative coverage. By then the damage had been done.
The legal proceedings have been launched in Holland as the magazine, written in Dutch, is readily available on newstands and in libraries across the country.
Chanan Hertzberger, the Chairman of the CJO, announcing the legal case against Brusselmans and Humo magazine, said in a statement: “The antisemitic hate perpetuated by Brusselmans was cross-border, aided and abbetted by Humo magazine who acted as the courier to many thousands of readers in Holland.”
“As such his antisemitic incitement to murder affects Dutch Jewry in the same way his incitement to murder affects Belgian Jewry. The irresponsibility and lack of Judgement at Humo – in light of the record rises in antisemitism across the continent since October the 7th – is astounding. Their reticence in pulling the piece, that should have been scrunched up and thrown in the editorial bin in the first place does not make them guardians of freedom of speech – as they would have it – but as willing accomplices. This cannot stand. And we at the CJO will not allow it to stand.”
Rabbi Menachem Margolin, Chairman of the European Jewish Association, who along with partners in Belgian Jewish organisations have an ongoing case against the magazine and Brusselmans in the Belgian courts declared: “The Brusselmans case is a hugely important one. It goes to the very heart of the battle against antisemitism. As a people denied a voice, or indeed representation throughout history, you will not find bigger advocates for freedom of speech than Jews. But Brusselmans and Humo exploited this freedom in the most disgusting and dangerous way, putting the lives of Jews literally in front of the writer’s pointed knife and in front of every reader he incited to do likewise either unwittingly or not.”
“We must never allow hate to win and must always hold those that perpetuate it to account for their actions,” he added.
According to Belgian news agency Belga, Brusselmans is due to appear before the Ghent magistrates’ court this week following a direct summons from the Antwerp-based Jewish Center for Information and Documentation (JID) for his column.
Besides EJA, the Coordinating Committee of Belgian Jewish Organisations (CCOJB) together with the Forum of Jewish Organisations (FJO), the Jonathas Institute and the Jewish Secular Community Center t(CCLJ) also lodged a new complaint last month with an examining magistrate in Ghent. They denounced the anti-Semitic and hateful remarks, saying they are determined to obtain condemnation of “this infamy”.