Lisbon Jewish monument, Brussels nativity scene defaced

The Lisbon monument memorializes hundreds of Jews murdered there on April 19, 1506.

By Canaan Lindor, JNS

The slogan “Free Palestine” on Saturday was spray-painted in red on a nativity scene in the Grand-Place of Brussels, one of the Belgian capital’s main squares and tourist attractions.

In a separate incident last week, unidentified individuals defaced a well-known monument to Jewish victims of an Inquisition-era massacre in Lisbon, Portugal, writing a neo-Nazi reference on the Star of David-shaped statue outside a central church.

The perpetrators in Lisbon used a marker to write “Haltz Judeu 1488,” a mix of the misspelled German command for “halt,” the word “Jew” in Portuguese and neo-Nazi code referencing Adolf Hitler’s famous 14-word quote (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”) followed by the number substitution for “HH,” signifying “heil Hitler.”

The Lisbon monument memorializes hundreds of Jews murdered there on April 19, 1506.

David Joffe Botelho, the president of the Jewish Community of Lisbon, told JNS that the incident underlined the need for a more proactive attitude to antisemitism by police, which his community has been advocating for in recent months.

“The Lisbon Jewish Community has been alerting the government and national coordinator for combating antisemitism to a worrying rise of antisemitism and for the urgent need for proactive action to prevent this abhorrent phenomenon from growing further,” said Botelho.

”The defacement of a symbolic monument is obviously condemnable, [and it] is expected that the authorities will act to restore its integrity and to find and punish those responsible. It is important to act quickly and decisively to deter similar future acts.”

Reacting to the incident in Brussels, the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) suggested it may be regarded as an anti-Christian hate crime.

“They came for Jews. Now they target Christians,” a CAM spokesperson wrote on X.