Belgium’s national rail company on Monday removed a massive graffiti that read “Israel terrorist state” from one of its cars, the second such incident within two months.
The graffiti, which was removed hours after unidentified individuals created it, stretched the entire length of one railcar, featuring giant red letters outlined in acid green with thick black borders and shaped in a dripping, horror-movie style font. White ghostlike silhouettes of bombs punctuated the background, accentuating the menacing aesthetic.
In videos of the train that circulated in anti-Israel accounts on social media, travelers on benches at an Antwerp train station scrolled their phones or waited with luggage, largely indifferent to the jarring wall of graffiti behind them. Also circulating online was drone footage of the train travelling through the Belgian countryside.
Last month, similar footage surfaced of a Belgian train bearing the slogan “death to the IDF.” It, too, was artfully painted on an entire railcar.
The Forum of Jewish Organizations in a statement said it was “deeply outraged” by the incident, the likes of which “ratchet up tension in society, increase polarization and create a climate where antisemitism can grow.”
The Forum thanks authorities and Michael Freilich, a lawmaker who is Jewish, for working to have the graffiti removed. Freilich also thanked the rail company but added on X that “an investigation into how this (repeatedly) can happen is absolutely necessary.”
The Forum said the incidents could only occur because of “negligence” that it called “unacceptable and unfathomable” from a “government company,” meaning the MNBS national rail company. “We had hoped that, seeing the historical role [of the national rail company] during World War II, there would be more alertness to such issues today,” the Forum said.
Belgium’s national rail company helped transport Jews to concentration and death camps when Belgium was under German occupation.
Earlier this month, Wies De Graeve, the director of Amnesty International in Belgium’s Flemish Region publicly called on MNBS to exclude a Spanish firm, CAF, from competing in a tender for a major deal because CAF has projects in Israel.
