This week it has been reported by Fast Forward that a carnival in Aalst, Belgium prominently displayed horrific anti-Semitic costumes in their annual parade.

Rudi Roth, a journalist for the Antwerp-based Joods Actueel Jewish paper, said the expressions of anti-Semitism in Aalst this year were more numerous and prominent than last year. He called it a “backlash effect.”

“The mayor, Christophe D’Haese of the right-wing New Flemish Alliance, said on Sunday that in the “context of the carnival, these displays are not anti-Semitic.” Any illegal hate speech, he added, would be dealt with by law enforcement.

“This is not an anti-Semitic event,” he told journalists at a press conference.

Joel Rubinfeld, the president of the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism, condemned the displays, “which although are the work of a minority of participants and spectators, stain the whole event.”

He said the event “certainly has anti-Semitic elements,” the likes of which he said had not been on display since the end of the Nazi occupation in 1945.

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