A Belgian Education Ministry website offered teachers comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, a newspaper in Antwerp reported.

The comparisons were available until recently on the KlasCement.be website, a major teaching resource offered to teachers in training by the Education Ministry of the Flemish Region, one of three entities that make up the federal Belgian state, the Jewish monthly Joods Actueel reported.

The website featured a caricature showing a Jewish man impaled on the fence of a concentration camp next to a man wearing a kafiyeh Arab headress, their limbs arranged in the form of a Nazi swastika. The caption “never again” appears above the image of the Jew and the words “over again!” are written at the Arab’s right foot. The caricature was drawn by the Brazilian artist Carlos Latuff, whom the Simon Wiesenthal Center has accused of open anti-Semitism though he rejects these claims.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

The cartoon, Joods Actueel reported, is part of an exercise in which teachers are asked to analyse the cartoon with one of three statements: “This is a Palestinian fleeing Jews;” “Jews want the entire area of Palestine back;” or “Jews call Palestine Israel.”

The Flemish Education Ministry did not reply to requests for comment by JTA, but Guido Joris of Joods Actueel said the exercise was pulled off the site following the publication of the newspaper’s article.

Another item removed following Joods Actueel’s expose was a role-playing game in which one of the characters is described as follows: “You sympathize with the radical group Hamas. You live in Gaza and work in Israel. You were shocked by the slaying of a Palestinian girl by Israeli soldiers at a school playground. Israel denies that it fired the shots but U.N. representatives in Gaza indicate it did.”

An unrelated issue this week involved an article published over the weekend by De Standaard, a leading Belgian daily, which asserts that settlers “sometimes poisoned Palestinian water wells” — a statement which Joods Actueel said was unfounded and reminiscent of ancient anti-Semitic tropes.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$90 $180

$360

Other amount