Belgium - Antwerp Jewish parents demand teacher’s ouster over apparent anti-Semitic Facebook post

“They are mega-racists themselves,” “The most difficult and unworldly people I know,”

Belgium - Antwerp Jewish parents demand teacher’s ouster over apparent anti-Semitic Facebook post. (Jta).

The parents association of a Jewish school in Antwerp demanded management fire a teacher who made an apparent anti-Semitic statement on Facebook.

The parents made the demand in a letter they wrote earlier this week to Moshe Mund, principal of the Jesode Hatora – Beth Jacob school in Antwerp, the Belgian Jewish monthly and news website Joods Actueel reported Sunday.

In the letter, the parents requested Mund fire Nathalie van Parys, a teacher at the school, who wrote on her Facebook account about parents of children attending the publicly-funded Jewish school.

“They are mega-racists themselves,” she wrote in commenting about an article that concerned the $1,000 that parents at her school and others are required to pay annually for security.

In her Flemish-language post, van Parys used the word “volk,” which means ethnicity, nation or people. “The most difficult and unworldly people I know,” she wrote.

In its letter, the parents association wrote: “The parents reacted with shock and frustration to this display of intolerance and hate. Such demeaning, anti-Semitic remarks are unacceptable in a democracy. That these statements came from faculty is just unbelievable.”

The parents asked Mund to “apply sanctions” against the teacher, adding: “For us, it is unacceptable that she teach.”

Jewish public schools in Antwerp – home to a predominantly Orthodox community of 18,000 — employ a secular staff, which is mostly non-Jewish and is entrusted with teaching pupils mandatory subjects according to the Belgian federal educational requirements and that of the Flemish Region. 

These schools, where boys and girls are taught separately, also have a Jewish staff that teaches children Jewish studies and Hebrew in accordance with Orthodox religious laws.

Belgian police uses water canon to disperse meeting of Laurent Louis Antisemitic supporters.

Belgian police uses water canon to disperse meeting of Laurent Louis Antisemitic supporters..(HLN). [GoogleTranslate]

According to the Belgian police, there are 150 protesters, the organization speaks of four hundred. The meeting, which should take place in Room Akdeniz, was organized by the independent MP Laurent Louis. The controversial French comedian Dieudonne would give a performance and there were also anti-Semitic speakers are invited.

Mayor Eric Tomas (PS) forbade in the morning the meeting, because it represented a threat to public order. 

Laurent Louis immediately shouted hundreds of protesters gathered, who do not seem to give way to the police. Louis negotiated with the police, however, that they would not interfere with the decision of the Council of State.

Around 15 pm officers had also once surrounded the demonstrators, but when they pulled themselves back yet. Probably the Congress participants thought then that the organizers had received directly from the State Council. Both Jewish organizations and organizations combating antisemitism opposed the congress taking place.

Some of them had already complained Friday. The Forum of Jewish Organizations and the Central Jewish Consistory of Belgium respond now positively to the banning of "planned hate meeting" and thank paying particular Interior Minister Joëlle Milquet. 

The 'First European Congress of dissent "is organized by a bookstore in Uccle and the party "Debout les Belges' by the independent MP Laurent Louis. Which has already been sued for defamation and disseminating documents in the investigation file of Marc Dutroux. Several participants have been convictions incurred in France, as the publicists Alain Soral, Johan Liver Neat, Kemi Seba or the controversial comedian Dieudonne.