(JTA) — Belgium’s Finance Ministry has exempted dozens of Dutch Holocaust survivors from penalties for not reporting special pensions they received from the Netherlands. The New Flemish Alliance, the ruling party of the Belgian state of the Flemish Region, led a reform in federal tax regulations implemented this month that exempts the survivors living in…
(JTA) — The parliament in the Belgian region of Flanders unanimously passed a resolution last week banning ritual slaughter without stunning. The decision will go into effect beginning in 2019. The resolution follows a similar decision approved in May by the Walloon Parliament in southern Belgium, Belgium’s largest region, which is home to just a…
(JTA) — The case of a Maltese European Union official accused of shouting anti-Semitic hate speech at an EU employee and assaulting her has come to trial two years after the incident occurred. EU administrator Stefan Grech allegedly beat a senior employee over the head with a plaque commemorating Italian dictator Benito Mussolini while calling…
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — The chief rabbi of Brussels urged a senior EU official to intervene to prevent Belgium’s largest region from banning ritual slaughter of animals. Rabbi Albert Guigui made the plea to Frans Timmermans, the First Vice President of the European Commission, during a rabbinical conference on Tuesday in the Netherlands, where Timmermans spoke…
(JTA) — Amid discussions on limiting ritual slaughter of animals in Belgium, a leader of the country’s Jewish community pleaded with lawmakers not to “repeat the Nazis’ acts.” The statement Thursday by Philippe Markiewicz, president of the Consistoire organization of Belgian Jewry that is responsible for providing religious services, was unusual because Jewish community officials rarely draw…
(JTA) — A cabinet minister in Belgium’s Flemish Region announced that a majority of lawmakers have decided to impose new limitations on ritual slaughter of animals in 2019. Ben Weyts, the animal welfare minister of the Flemish Region — one of three autonomous states that make up the federal kingdom of Belgium – on Thursday…
(JTA) — Jews from Belgium’s Flemish Region said they “lost all confidence” in the country’s anti-racism authority over its lawyer’s defense of a Palestinian man whom the same lawyer helped convict for hate speech over calls to slaughter Jews. The unusual rebuke Thursday by the Forum of Jewish Organization of Flanders came after the Jewish…
(JTA) — Three men were indicted in Belgium for chanting in Arabic at an anti-Israel rally about a site where Muslims are believed to have massacred Jews centuries ago. Two organizers of the Antwerp rally in July 2014 and a participant had cried out “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning,” the Gazet…
