The US and Israel have redoubled their attack on Belgium over its circumcision laws, as meanwhile the EU examines legal ways to punish West Bank settlers.<\/p>\n
The US ambassador to Belgium and the Israeli foreign minister both denounced the host country of the EU institutions on X on Wednesday (6 May).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe prosecution of these religious figures (mohels), one of whom is American, is WRONG and won\u2019t be tolerated. Belgium will be thought of now as anti Semitic by world [sic],\u201d said the US ambassador, Bill White.<\/p>\n
Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa\u2019ar said the case was a \u201cscarlet letter [badge of shame] on Belgian society\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith this act Belgium joins a short and shameful list, together with Ireland, of countries that use criminal law to prosecute Jews for practicing Judaism,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Belgium have just announced the indictment of the three Mohels who were investigated last year in Antwerp. <\/p>\n
With this act Belgium joins a short and shameful list, together with Ireland, of countries that use criminal law to prosecute Jews for practicing Judaism.<\/p>\n
This is a\u2026<\/p>\n
\u2014 Gideon Sa’ar | \u05d2\u05d3\u05e2\u05d5\u05df \u05e1\u05e2\u05e8 (@gidonsaar) May 6, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n The act in question was Wednesday\u2019s decision, by the Antwerp Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office, to seek a trial of two men (not three, as Sa\u2019ar claimed) accused of circumcising boys without having the legally required medical licence to do so, which it called \u201cintentional assault or battery with premeditation against minors\u201d.<\/p>\n Antwerp\u2019s Chamber of Indictments will decide on 18 June whether to proceed.<\/p>\n The affair has angered Jewish groups, such as the Brussels-based European Jewish Congress, ever since Belgian police first raided homes in Antwerp in May 2025.<\/p>\n \u201cA 3,500-year-old covenant, practised in Antwerp for the last 800 years, criminalised for lacking EU medical licences \u2026 it\u2019s state harassment of Jewish life\u201d, also said rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, on Wednesday.<\/p>\n It already became a diplomatic incident on 16 February, when White first accused Belgium of conducting an \u201cANTI SEMITIC \u2018PROSECUTION\u2019,\u201d prompting a formal Belgian rebuke to the US at the time.<\/p>\n And Belgian foreign minister Maxime Pr\u00e9vot also fired back on Wednesday.<\/p>\n \u201cEnough with these caricatures, minister [Sa\u2019ar] \u2026 since you yourself recently urged against conducting diplomacy via Twitter, I suggest that we discuss all these issues during a meeting in Israel,\u201d said Pr\u00e9vot on X.<\/p>\n The Belgian minister told the US envoy: \u201cIt is inappropriate to publicly criticise a country and tarnish its image simply because you disagree with judicial proceedings. I have already told you this [in February]\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cTo portray those [legal proceedings] as a country\u2019s desire to undermine the religious freedom of Jews is defamatory,\u201d said Pr\u00e9vot.<\/p>\n At the same time, Pr\u00e9vot has been one of Israel\u2019s fiercest critics in the EU Council and Belgium, along with several other EU states, has called for trade sanctions on Israel<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI was personally in Beirut on 8 April the day the [Israeli] bombs fell,\u201d he told press in Luxembourg on 21 April, speaking of an Israeli airstrike that killed some 300 people.<\/p>\n And Israel has a track record of accusing all its EU critics of antisemitism, both in their foreign policy and treatment of Jewish minorities.<\/p>\n Trivialising anti-semitism<\/p>\n But for Claudio Francavilla, from the Human Rights Watch group in the US, its tactics were wearing thin.<\/p>\n \u201cThe greatest disservice to [fighting] antisemitism is its trivialisation, and Israeli authorities have been engaged in it for far too long,\u201d he said of Wednesday\u2019s circumcision row.<\/p>\n And Sa\u2019ar\u2019s administration had lost the moral high ground anyway, Francavilla said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s pretty rich from Israeli authorities to accuse the Belgian ones of partisanship, while Israeli courts rubber-stamp genocide [in Gaza], apartheid, illegal settlement policies, and continue to acquit IDF [Israeli] soldiers and state-backed settlers accused of the most serious crimes against the Palestinians [in the West Bank],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n EU action on Israeli settlers<\/p>\n Germany and Italy have so far blocked trade sanctions on Israel, but Italy and France support action against West Bank settlers<\/a>.<\/p>\n