'Escalate for Palestine:' Belgian Holocaust memorial defaced

A Brussels memorial to non-Jews who worked to rescue Jews from the Nazi genocide campaign was defaced with anti-Israel messages on Tuesday, Jewish organizations said.

“Escalate for Palestine, everyone,” the graffiti on the Monument to the Righteous of Belgium read, according to a photograph published by Belgian League Against Antisemitism vice-president Odile Margaux. “We are all equal.”

The European Jewish Congress said on Saturday “This outrageous disrespect of Shoah victims doesn’t advance the Palestinian cause. It is simply unacceptable.”

Margaux noted that the vandalism occurred a few days after the defacement of a stele dedicated to Belgian resistance fighters who attacked a convoy to Auschwitz.

'A despicable stain'

The Coordinating Committee of Belgian Jewish Organizations (CCOJB) on Tuesday denounced the spray painting of the plaque commemorating  Youra Livchitz, Jean Franklemon, and Robert Maistriau, who participated in the attack on the twentieth convoy from the Mechelen transit camp to Auschwitz.

The plaque was spray painted with a white swastika and the white nationalist version of the Celtic Cross.

“This desecration constitutes a despicable stain, trampling on the memory of these heroes,” said CCOJB. “This despicable attack against Belgium and against the resistance is a new expression of the exacerbated antisemitic hatred sweeping through our country and around the world, particularly through the glorification of the Nazis.”

CCOJB called on the country to take strong measures against rising antisemitism and to appoint an independent national coordinator on the issue.