After the Brusselmans affair, the Flemish magazine HUMO has struck again… This time, it is the medieval antisemitic trope of the “Jewish butcher” that has been revived by a cartoon by the duo Kama & Seele. Joël Kotek, historian and president of the Jonathas Institute, looks back at the history and current state of antisemitic imagery in the Belgian and international press.
The deadly sequence of events triggered by Hamas on October 7, 2023, not only caused a major humanitarian catastrophe, it also served as a trigger for an outpouring of antisemitic rhetoric on a scale and in forms that were thought to have been relegated to the most extreme margins of Western public discourse. Far beyond violent slogans or isolated hateful remarks, centuries-old antisemitic tropes—which we thought had been discredited forever by their historical association with the Shoah—are now making a thunderous comeback in public debate, sometimes even in the most respected media outlets. At the heart of these hackneyed motifs is the resurgence of the image of the Jew as a child killer and blood drinker. The Jew (admittedly disguised as a Zionist) no longer appears as a citizen, soldier, or political actor, but as the supernatural embodiment of absolute evil. The imagery of the vampire, the sacrificer, the butcher—until now the tool of Nazi propaganda, far-right pamphlets, and the rhetoric of the radically anti-Zionist left—is flourishing again today… in the mainstream European press.
When Humo re-enacts Der Stürmer
One of the most disturbing examples of this resurgence is a cartoon by Kama & Seele published on July 31 by the Flemish magazine HUMO (No. 4430). The drawing depicts an Israeli/Zionist/Jewish (?) butcher slaughtering “Palestinian children in Gaza without stunning them.” The image is antisemitic in its title, “Slaughter without stunning,” which clearly alludes to Jewish ritual slaughter, now banned in Flanders.
It is also antisemitic in its visual representation: the bloody corpse of a Palestinian child surrounded by terrified children who are destined to suffer the same fate as their little friend, the slaughterhouse. Finally, it is anti-Semitic in its caption, which leaves no room for ambiguity: “On October 7, 2023, Israel invaded Gaza [emphasis added]. The rest is part of a horrific history, a chilling present. And the future, because the genocide continues unabated. “
You read that right: according to HUMO, it was Israel, not Hamas, that was the invader on October 7. As for the phrase ”the rest is history,” it raises questions about the historical past to which the editors of the caption refer, clearly inspired by medieval accusations of Jewish ritual murder.
What is HUMO?
A marginal, second-rate media outlet? Not at all. Humo is a Flemish weekly magazine for the general public, founded in 1936 and deeply rooted in the cultural life of Dutch-speaking Belgium. Known for its irreverent tone, sharp satire, and significant influence on music and popular culture, it has shaped generations of readers and artists. If we had to find a foreign equivalent, it would be somewhere between Télérama, Rolling Stone, and The Village Voice: mainstream cultural coverage mixed with a provocative voice.
Since October 7, HUMO has been a barometer of Flemish unease towards Jews. Its missteps are commonplace. In August 2024, as Rafael Amselem’s investigation in K. recounted, the magazine caused an uproar when its columnist Herman Brusselmans wrote this astonishing sentence: “I am so angry that I want to stick a sharp knife in the throat of every Jew I meet. “These remarks were condemned by Jewish organizations, which denounced them as an explicit call for violence and pure and simple antisemitism. To no avail. The editorial team at Humo defended Brusselmans, dismissing the words as satire and leaving the column published. Despite the scandal, the magazine initially supported the text before eventually removing it discreetly from its website. And yet, far from learning from this episode and repeating the offense, HUMO went further by publishing this antisemitic cartoon by Kama & Seele.
Who are Kama & Seele?
Kamagurka (Luc Zeebroek, born in 1956) and Herr Seele (Peter van Heirseele, born in 1959) are among the most unique voices in Flemish cultural life.
Appearing in the late 1970s, they formed a duo combining visual art, satire, and performance, introducing a humor that was surreal, irreverent, and deeply unsettling to mainstream tastes. Their most famous creation, Cowboy Henk, has become a cultural reference. Beyond their fame in the comic book world, Kama and Seele are cultural barometers of Flanders, occupying a place in both galleries and the mass media. They have the status of Flemish cultural icons. Their antisemitic appropriation will leave its mark on a Flemish psyche already troubled by Jewish symbolism.
Image and blood: archaeology of an antisemitic trope
The connection with the medieval myth of the blood libel, namely the Jewish practice of infanticide, is more than obvious: it is glaringly obvious. To deny it is pure bad faith. These few examples bear witness to this.
The accusation of ritual murder, reported as early as the 1st century CE in pagan Egypt, took root in Western Christianity from the 12th century onwards, culminating in the 20th century in episodes such as that in Kielce, where, in post-war Poland (1946), 42 survivors of the Shoah were massacred by a fanatical mob on the grounds that they had kidnapped a Polish child for the purpose of sacrificing it. One might have thought that this type of deadly delusion belonged to another era, but it has resurfaced today in its original form, using the same graphic codes as those of Der Stürmer, in a Belgian cultural magazine.
This is obviously no coincidence, given the phenomenon of secondary antisemitism.
Secondary antisemitism: repressed guilt
The concept of secondary antisemitism refers to hatred of Jews not despite Auschwitz, but because of Auschwitz. This is not a mere figure of speech, but a coherent psychological mechanism that consists of transforming one’s own guilt towards Jews into accusatory resentment. In this sense, Nazifying Israel allows many of the heirs of collaboration, as well as their children and grandchildren, to free themselves from the weight of the memory of the Shoah. Let us remember that 67% of the Jews of Flanders were exterminated in a climate of undeniable collaboration. In this context, the war in Gaza offers an ideal pretext for a virtuous condemnation of the Jewish state, since it is being waged in the name of human rights.
As Vladimir Jankélévitch wrote with prophetic bitterness: “What if the Jews themselves were Nazis? That would be wonderful.” In northern Belgium, this slander is certainly true, as evidenced by the repeated missteps of Flemish cartoonists. Here are two small examples.
The cartoon in HUMO, with the chilling title “Slaughter without stunning,” perfectly illustrates this mechanism of self-exoneration. This cartoon, which claims that Israel deliberately kills children—the designated targets of an ongoing genocide—is not simply provocative. It is a conscious or unconscious revival of a thousand-year-old Christian fantasy and a guilt towards Jews that is rarely acknowledged. The theme of the Jewish ogre, the Jewish infanticide, the bloodthirsty Jew: all figures from the European, and now Arab-Muslim, antisemitic repertoire.
The habit of portraying Jews as ogres and vampires sticks, like Captain Haddock’s band-aid, to the collective unconscious of the Christian West. These clichés are so deeply ingrained in the bruised psyche of the West that at the slightest opportunity—and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict constantly provides such opportunities—they resurface with force and ferocity: misguided caricatures, outrageous and insulting viewpoints, the demonization of an entire nation and an entire people.
And even when the machine gets out of control and goes crazy, no one pretends to be affected by it…
What does the Humo cartoon represent?
HUMO has crossed a red line: the line that separates legitimate criticism of a government—and Israel, like any democracy, can and should be criticized—from the reactivation of stereotypes that are as old as they are repugnant. Our concern is not to defend Mr. Netanyahu as a person or his policies. Far from it… It is to denounce a relentless mechanism: as soon as Israel is mentioned (and not Russia, China, Sudan, or Syria), the worst accusations resurface: Israel’s leaders are bloodthirsty monsters; the Jews are their accomplices; they don their old rags, temporarily stored away in the prop room, those of the Beast. The accusation of genocide, as we well understand, takes over here from the accusation of deicide and infanticide. In Christian societies, Jews are blamed for killing Christ. In secular societies, they are accused of exterminating an entire people. In either case, the guilty Jews must be morally banished and excluded from the community of men. This rhetoric of banishment and ontological exclusion is occupying an increasingly disturbing place in the Belgian media, whether Dutch-speaking or French-speaking. Antisemitism, let us not forget, is always based on a reversal of reality. The real act of genocide on October 7, 2023, was committed by Hamas and its allies. However, let us remember that it is Israel that the magazine blames for this terrible crime. “On October 7,” it writes, “Israel invaded Gaza.” This is not only a factual error, it is a delusional denial of the facts: on that day, more than 1,200 Israeli civilians, including babies, were massacred, mutilated, raped, burned, and torn to pieces by Hamas commandos. The paradox is only apparent, since, as we know all too well, in the antisemitic imagination, reality does not matter: the Jew is always guilty. Even as a victim, he is a tormentor, and this reversal is part of the paradigm.
In this regard, the correction made by HUMO does not help matters. It reads: “Correction – In issue 4430 of HUMO, the editorial team published a caption accompanying the Kama & Seele chart, which began with the sentence: ‘On October 7, 2023, Israel invaded Gaza. This statement is factually incorrect: on October 7, it was Hamas that launched an attack, to which Israel responded on the same day with air strikes.”
This denial is pathetic, if not laughable. Moreover, the discovery of the “factually correct” version does not seem to have prompted HUMO to question the implications of the fact that it was Hamas’ massacres that started the deadly sequence of events: the reference to October 7 has simply disappeared from the caption, replaced by a sober “In October 2023, Israel invaded Gaza.”
HUMO, an antisemitic media outlet?
Should HUMO be described as an antisemitic media outlet? The question deserves to be asked, given the repeated—and barely subliminal—antisemitic messages that this publication delivers month after month. What is certain is that HUMO published a cartoon worthy of Der Stürmer, the Nazi weekly, which also published images of Jews killing children until 1945. All crimes of blood begin with crimes of pen and ink, concluded the Nuremberg tribunal in sentencing the editor of Der Stürmer, Julius Streicher, even though he did not personally participate in the execution of the genocide. Will those responsible at HUMO have to answer in court for the consequences of their publications, at a time when antisemitic violence is currently sweeping across Europe?
Currently, this is not the case, and the most chilling aspect of this affair is that there is every chance that HUMO will offer no apology and will never be punished. On the contrary, denouncing the “Zionist ogre” is most rewarding in the flat country of Belgium. The impunity of antisemites appears to be total. In the name of satire, anything goes when it comes to Jews (it’s true) – even incitement to murder. There’s no need to revisit the acquittal of Herman Brusselmans, who, in the same media outlet, promised to stab every Jew he met in the throat. Let’s bet instead that Brusselmans and his two cronies, Kama & Seele, will soon be honored with honorary doctorates from some prestigious Flemish universities. The 2025 caricature prize already seems to be a foregone conclusion for our two illustrators. Let’s remember this before continuing: every crime against humanity is necessarily preceded by messages and images of hatred.
The blood of the Jews: antisemitic rhetoric reborn in Belgium
Antisemitism is not just hatred or an opinion: it is a syntax, a coded way of assigning and representing evil. This lexicon, inherited from the Christian Middle Ages, updated by modern politics, fueled by sacrificial imagery, bloody obsessions, and fantasies of domination, has long been hidden but has never disappeared. It is a smoldering fire, waiting for the right moment to reignite… The scene changes, but the script remains the same, until very recently in the French-language press.
Conclusion: The Jewish butcher as an icon of inhumanity
The message conveyed by HUMO is anything but neutral. It draws on an old, well-established grammar. The trope of the “Jewish butcher ” is particularly revealing. It reappears in various forms, such as in this caricature by Ralph Soupault—a communist cartoonist who became a collaborator—depicting a Jew armed with a knife in a slaughterhouse.
The figure of the Jewish butcher has been particularly popular in the Arab press for over 40 years.
The poster above, published in 2002 by the Palestinian Student Union and a student association at the University of San Francisco, demonstrates the direct links between anti-Zionism and antisemitism: the Palestinian child is clearly described as having been “slaughtered according to Jewish rites” “The same is true of the drawing in image 12, created by Eric Buzin, a close associate of French fascist Alain Soral. The language is purely antisemitic: ”livestock is slaughtered… as required by the Talmud.”
We remember that a Jewish butcher in London was once suspected of being… Jack the Ripper. This obsession is not innocent. It inscribes Jews in an imaginary world of cruelty, flesh, blood, and mutilation. And the images that feed it are not just words or drawings: they are calls—implicit or explicit—for exclusion and dehumanization, which often pave the way for the worst. Especially for Jews, as tradition dictates.
Joël Kotek
Joël Kotek is a historian and professor emeritus at the Free University of Brussels as well as a faculty member of ISGAP (New York). He is the president of the Institut Jonathas, a center for study and action against antisemitism. He is the author of Le siècle des camps, détention, concentration extermination, cent ans de mal radical (The Century of Camps: Detention, Concentration, Extermination, One Hundred Years of Radical Evil), with Pierre Rigoulot, Lattès, Paris, 2000; Au nom de l’antisionisme: l’image des Juifs et d’Israël dans la caricature depuis la seconde Intifada (In the Name of Anti-Zionism: The Image of Jews and Israel in Caricature since the Second Intifada), with Dan Kotek, Brussels, Éd. Complexe, 2003; The Anti-Semitic Postcard: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Shoah), with Gérard Silvain, Paris, Berg, 2005; ‘Israël et les médias francophones au miroir du conflit gazaoui’ (Israel and the French-speaking media in the mirror of the Gaza conflict), CCOJB, Brussels, 2015; and ‘Shoah et Bande dessinée, l’image au service et la mémoire’ (The Shoah and comic books: images in the service of memory), Denoël, Paris, 2017.
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