They Never Thought Belgium Would Speak Out - They Were Wrong

"Jews are furious. Well let them be quit frankly."

KernowDamo: 21 Belgian diplomats have come out swinging against Israel - hardly diplomatic you might think, but this is genocide after all!

Right, so in diplomatic life, silence can often be mistaken for civility, and inaction for neutrality. But then there are moments when silence becomes complicity, and when those trained in matters of discretion, as a result of that, feel compelled to speak out instead. Belgium has now reached such a moment it would seem. You see Belgium now finds itself entangled in a moral and legal crisis and the crisis in question is of course of global significance: how to respond to Israel’s conduct in Gaza, which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has declared may plausibly amount to genocide.

This reckoning as far as Belgium goes has come about as a result of two unprecedented events. First, there arrest and interrogation of two Israeli nationals—one of them an active-duty soldier—at the Tomorrowland music festival, under universal jurisdiction laws, which made headlines around the world as a European first. Secondly though, there has been the striking and coordinated intervention of no fewer than 21 former Belgian diplomats and ambassadors, who have now come out and publicly demanded that their government impose sanctions on Israel, recognise the State of Palestine, and take concrete steps to end Belgian complicity in Israel’s actions. European complicity in Israeli actions just continues to crack up and not before time either.

Right, so Belgium is shifting more and more proactively against Israeli complicity for those genocide crimes in Gaza, those crimes against humanity and each day of late there seems to be one more nation people of significant standing are saying enough is enough. In Belgium, this seems to have started on July 20, when Belgian police detained and interrogated two Israeli nationals at the globally renowned Tomorrowland festival. One of them was an active-duty soldier; the other, according to court documents, had been linked to a Gaza military operation under review for war crimes, they were a reservist. The arrests stemmed from a legal complaint filed by the Hind Rajab Foundation and the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), which cited Belgium’s universal jurisdiction laws to argue for accountability over Israel’s conduct in Gaza, but for the first time ever, a European state has responded to this by saying, yeah, your right, we will arrest them.