Belgium Jewish’s schools shut down Friday, Chabad cancelled a public Friday night dinner, and several Jews have stopped going to synagogue in the wake of Thursday’s counter-terror raid that ended with Belgian police killing two terrorists but still looking for others.
A Jewish school in Amsterdam also shut its doors Friday.
Jews fear a repeat of last week’s savage attack on a kosher deli in Paris, where four Jews were murdered and several others were held hostage until police stormed the store and ended the siege.
Belgium’s Joods Actueel reported that schools in Brussels and Antwerp were closed on Friday based on intelligence information from officials, including the Mossad, that it was “too dangerous” to allow children to go to school.
“We were informed that we are a potential target and therefore take no chances, said Isi Morsel, head of the organizing power of the largest Jewish school Jesode Hatora.
He is confident that schools will be able to re-open on Monday.
Confidence is the last thing Jews in Belgium, if not in all of Europe, have these days.
Belgian police have said that guarding Jewish’s schools does not mean they can prevent terror because they are not equipped, with the proper weapons and training to challenge the animals from ISIS and other Islamic radical barbarians.
The director of the Rabbinical Center of Europe (RCE) thinks that perhaps Jews could take up the slack by arming themselves with guns.
RCE director Rabbi Menachem Margolin, director general of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe (RCE) and the European Jewish Association (EJA) wrote to European Union officials “We hereby ask that gun licensing laws are reviewed with immediate effect to allow designated people in the Jewish communities and institutions to own weapons for the essential protection of their communities, as well as receiving the necessary training to protect their members from potential terror attacks.”
A Jewish cartoonist was among the victims of attack by radical Islamists on the Charles Hebdo offices in Paris last week, and four Jews were gunned down in the attack on a kosher deli in Paris two days later.
And Rabbi Margolin wants to allow Jews to carry guns?
That would mean terrorists, armed with assault rifles and prepared by months of military training, would be able to add a few pistols to their arsenal after killing their Jewish victims who would barely be able to pull their pistols out of holster before being sliced by machine-gun fire.
Perhaps Rabbi Margolin thinks that Belgian Jews are in the Warsaw Ghetto and are living in underground sewers, needing guns to fight off the Nazis.
Or perhaps he thinks that fighting terrorists is like a cowboys and Indians movie.
The recent attacks in France “have revealed the urgent need to stop talking and start acting,” Rabbi Margolin wrote.”Right now Jews do not feel safe.”
Right now?
Jew in Europe felt safe last month, or last year?
Hundreds of Jews, from Israel and elsewhere, wear a hat and not a kippa in the streets of many European cities because they are afraid of being spat on, beaten, robbed and killed.
Rabbi Margolin also wrote, “People are afraid to come to synagogue. People are afraid to go to Jewish schools.”
“[The police] are not doing enough, for sure. We just need more. The best solution is having at least two police officers at each Jewish institution, 24 hours a day. Until that happens we need to be able to feel secure in other ways” and allowing Jews to carry guns would “allow our people to feel protected.”
He is not talking about training Jews with assault rifles and counter-terror tactics, or even a bit of karate.