A Belgian legislator who last year told the Parliament Israel is using Islamic support to overthrow Assad now has taken the podium to charge, “The Holocaust was set up and financed by the pioneers of Zionism.”
Intelligent people take these kinds of tantrums as harmless ignorance from a hate-mongering populist, but that is what they said in 1933.
So speaking of the Holocaust, Belgium’s Laurent Louis, who has created his own Movement for Liberty and Democracy party after being expelled from the People’s Party, stood up in the Belgian legislator and performed the quenelle, the invention of Dieudonne, the so-called French comedian.
The president of Belgium’s parliament condemned Louis’ theatrical hate. “I would like to reinforce my condemnation of these hateful acts,” Andre Flahaut said.
The Belgian League against Anti-Semitism, a newly-established watchdog, pledged during its inaugural event to focus much of its activities on Louis — an independent member of the lower house of Belgium’s Federal Parliament.
“We do not wish to offer Laurent a podium,” Isaac Franco, the league’s vice president, said earlier this week in Brussels. “But considering the tens of thousands of visitors to his website, we see he represents a threat that needs to be confronted.”
Hate mongers who are elected to public office are a danger to the public.
Louis has said that Israel was guilty of Nazi crimes against Palestinians, and last year he posed for pictures outside parliament while standing on an Israeli flag.
Below is a video, with English sub-titles, of his speech in the Belgian parliament last May when he accused Israel of everything under the sun in order to promote a “Greater Israel.” According to Louis, that does not top at Judea and Samaria. It includes parts of Iraq, Jordan and Jordan.
His speech started out with condemnation of Israel for conducting surveillance flights over Lebanon and then connected that with the IDF’s bombing Syrian trying to destabilize the country and use the Arab Spring rebellion to promote Greater Israel.
The JTA contributed to this report.