BRUSSELS \u2014 Belgium summoned the U.S. ambassador on Tuesday over a social media post where he accused the country of antisemitic prosecution of Jewish Belgians, the kingdom’s foreign minister said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLabeling Belgium as antisemitic is not just wrong, it\u2019s dangerous disinformation that undermines the real fight against hatred,\u201d said Belgian foreign minister Maxime Pr\u00e9vot in a post on X on Monday. The summons is a rare move between staunch allies.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn ambassador accredited to Belgium has a responsibility to respect our institutions, our elected representatives, and the independence of our judicial system,” Pr\u00e9vot said. “Personal attacks against a Belgian minister and interference in judicial matters violate basic diplomatic norms.\u201d<\/p>\n
National broadcaster VRT said Belgian authorities are investigating whether three men in Antwerp were performing circumcisions without certified medical training.<\/p>\n
U.S. Ambassador Bill White said on a post on X that this investigation was “unacceptable harassment of the Jewish community here in Antwerp and in Belgium.<\/p>\n
He said he would visit the three accused men in Antwerp and asked Belgium’s minister of health to join him.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou must make a legal provision to allow Jewish religious MOHELS to perform their duties here in Belgium,” he said, using a Hebrew term for a Jewish officiant trained in circumcision, a central tenet of the faith.<\/p>\n
Without it, a Jewish person typically can\u2019t have a bar mitzvah, a Jewish wedding or be buried in a Jewish cemetery.<\/p>\n
Pr\u00e9vot, the foreign minister, said that \u201cBelgian law permits ritual circumcision when performed by a qualified physician under strict health and safety standards\u201d and that he would not comment on an ongoing investigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRUSSELS \u2014 Belgium summoned the U.S. ambassador on Tuesday over a social media post where he accused the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1952,7,1916,1953],"class_list":{"0":"post-2206","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-belgium","8":"tag-ap-a-wire","9":"tag-belgium","10":"tag-religion","11":"tag-wires-bot"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}