Bill White, the U.S. ambassador to Brussels, denounced Sammy Mahdi after the chair of the Christian Democratic and Flemish (CD&V) party made remarks denigrating Jewish ritual circumcision.
“I am deeply shocked by these inappropriate and deeply offensive comments. You can hear the disdain and disrespect shown to the beautiful Jewish families across Belgium,” White stated.
“Once again, it’s an absolute disgrace and demonstrates when words like this are spoken by a public official there is a serious issue of antisemitism here in Belgium,” the U.S. envoy stated. “Anyone who can’t see this is blind as a bat.”
The ambassador was responding to Feb. 26 remarks that Mahdi made to Villa Politica, a Dutch language news station. Mahdi was translated as saying that mohels, or those trained in Jewish ritual circumcision, are “butchers by day, and on weekends circumcising children as a side job.”
A Belgian Jewish nonprofit that fights antisemitism called JID stated that “it is truly outrageous that a Christian party like CD&V completely mocks and rejects centuries-old religious practices of other faiths in such a way by spreading lies.”
“After his comparisons to Israel and the Holocaust, provoking a government crisis at the expense of Israeli terror victims and portraying the only Jewish MP as a pariah, he has now reached a new antisemitic low,” the group said. “Sammy Mahdi with this once again brings his once-so-noble party into disgrace with such behaviour.”
Mahdi has been at the forefront of efforts to push the Belgian government to boycott Israel. White has criticized him in the past for suggesting that Jewish members of Parliament had dual loyalties.
In the past, the Belgian foreign minister has said that suggestions the country is antisemitic are “false, offensive and unacceptable” and that “Belgian law permits ritual circumcision when performed by a qualified physician under strict health and safety standards.”
