Belgium Drops Case Against Cafe Owner Who Welcomed Dogs, But Not Jews

Image by adogslifephoto/iStock
(JTA) — Prosecutors in Belgium dropped criminal complaints against a Turkish café owner who put up a sign banning Jews.
A café in the town of Saint-Nicolas had displayed a sign saying dogs are welcome at his business, “but Jews are not.”
The La Dernière Heure newspaper on Friday reported that the Prosecutor’s Office in Liege dropped discrimination charges filed in 2014 against the owner, who was not named in the report.
Joel Rubinfeld, the president of the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism told the paper that he was “disgusted and deeply disappointed” by the decision, which a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office confirmed to the newspaper but declined to explain.
The sign prompted protests internationally and in Belgium, where an Islamist had killed four people at Brussels’ Jewish museum just weeks earlier.
The Turkish text of the offensive sign reads, “Dogs are allowed in this establishment but Jews are not under any circumstances.” The French text replaces “Jews” with “Zionists.”
The window display, put up while Israel was fighting Hamas in Gaza, also included a Palestinian flag, an Israeli flag crossed out with a red “X” and a kaffiyeh, or Palestinian shawl, draped around it.
Saint-Nicolas Mayor Jacques Heleven dispatched police to the café when word of the display got out. He said that such anti-Semitism is “unacceptable.”
But Rubinfeld told La Dernière Heure that the case’s closing shows that “the fight against racism, including anti-Semitism, remains in the rhetorical realm.”
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.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Jewish students, alumni decry ‘weaponization of antisemitism’ across country
-
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history
-
Opinion Why can Harvard stand up to Trump? Because it didn’t give in to pro-Palestinian student protests
-
Culture How an Israeli dance company shaped a Catholic school boy’s life
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.