Belgian poet and novelist Herman Brusselmans wrote a column in the site Humo where he said that "I want to ram a sharp knife through the throat of every Jew I meet."
This brought a lot of criticism, because it is a pretty antisemitic thing to say.
But Al Jazeera's article about it says "Jewish and right-wing groups attack Belgian writer for sympathizing with Gaza."
The editors of Humo responded to the controversy by saying, "You can't isolate that one sentence, you have to read the entire column. Then you know immediately that Brusselmans doesn't mean it literally and therefore doesn't 'incite murder' at all. ....Herman Brusselmans' statements are part of a satirical column, not a journalistic article or an interview. Brusselmans is a celebrated and respected writer who likes to swear and sneer, eagerly using hyperbole and foul language, but he is not an anti-Semite. Even more than other columns, his should be judged by literary and not journalistic standards. With satirical writers such as Herman Brusselmans, the writing should never be taken one hundred percent literally."
So let's look at the entire column and judge it by literary standards.
It starts off by saying that he has mood swings, sometimes getting uncontrollably angry at people and sometimes being sympathetic, using an exaggerated and obviously fictional example:
I am working hard on my upcoming collection 'Zat genoeg om met een duivelswijf te poepen' (Drunk enough to fuck with an ugly woman). It contains impressions, opinions, descriptions, reviews, objective observations, essays, columns and scattered bits of poetic prose.For example, I am talking about a man I saw walking down the street yesterday, dressed in a washed-out shirt, fake cotton trousers and old sandals. I felt enormous pity for the man, and I imagined how he must try to get by on a meagre pension and not even have enough to buy a new pair of sandals. I watched him go and almost had tears in my eyes. What had he not experienced? For example, his wife who committed suicide, one of his daughters who became pregnant at the age of 13 by an unemployed pipe fitter, his other daughter who went to Bhagwan and was only employed there to clean the toilets, his son who was so homosexual that many other homosexuals said to him: 'Don't exaggerate, Alain,' and he himself who worked for forty years against his will at the OCMW in Sint-Amandsberg. He had to give up his only hobby, collecting poisonous substances, because he started to suffer from problems with his lungs, stomach, intestines, liver, kidneys and, strangely enough, his armpits, in which a kind of moss began to grow.And yesterday this man walked down the street, and he moved me, although I suddenly thought: cut your feet off your legs, you bastard, then you'll be rid of those stupid sandals. It's like I have big mood swings.
That's the setup to the antisemitic screed that follows:
Despite this, I keep a clear mind, and so I follow the reality of the day closely. It does not escape me either that a Third World War is coming. The Middle East will explode, with nefarious consequences for the rest of the globe. And all because of a small, fat, bald Jew who bears the ominous name of Bibi Netanyahu , and who for whatever reason wants to ensure that the entire Arab world is wiped out. For every Hamas or Hezbollah fighter who is killed by that Israeli shitty army, hundreds of innocent civilians are killed, and we can do nothing but keep repeating that many of them are children, and that we here, in the so-called safe West, cannot imagine that the same fate would befall our children. I see an image of a crying and screaming Palestinian boy, completely out of his mind, calling for his mother who is lying under the rubble, and I imagine that boy is my own son Roman , and the mother is my own girlfriend Lena , and I get so angry that I want to ram a sharp knife through the throat of every Jew I meet.
Of course, you always have to remember: not every Jew is a murderous bastard, and to give shape to that thought I imagine an elderly Jewish man shuffling down my own street, dressed in a washed-out shirt, fake cotton trousers and old sandals, and I feel sorry for him and almost get tears in my eyes, but a moment later I wish him to hell, and yes, that is a mood swing, and my upcoming collection will unfortunately be full of it. And in the meantime, a pack of cigarettes, which could comfort me, has become much more expensive again.
I know a little bit about satire. I've been a fan of satire my entire life.
This isn't satire.
I'm sure he personally does not really want to stab every Jew he meets and therefore the wish to kill them is obviously exaggerated. It is not, however, satirical. Just as it is not satirical when he says that Israel is killing hundreds of civilians for every terrorist, or that Palestinian children are screaming for their mothers buried under the rubble, or when he says he pictures suffering Palestinians as his own loved ones.
Clearly he believes those things.
There is no comparison between saying "I hate this person's footwear so I want to cut off his legs" - which is indeed satire - and saying "I hate Israel so I want to stab every Jew I meet" - which is antisemitism.
Rather than satire, it is an exaggerated account of how he really feels. Which means part of him really wants to see all Jews suffer for Israel's fictional crimes. And like many bigots, he defends himself by saying, "Can't you take a joke?"
"Not every Jew is a murderous bastard"? Only some? Only most? How much more obvious can an antisemitic statement get?
Brusselmans defends himself by saying, "'I mainly meant that if this were to happen to my child, I would do something to the perpetrators. Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza and I shouldn't even be allowed to say that? Perhaps more attention and indignation should be paid to what is happening in the Middle East."
Oh. So every Jew is guilty of what he thinks is happening in Gaza. Even when when Brusselmans is defending himself outside of the "satire," he is still stereotyping all Jews.
This is the modus operandi of antisemites - defend the hate, claim it is a joke, claim free speech, and finally say that all the criticism distracting from the real issue of how evil Jews are.
