2023-11-27 10:39:48
N-VA MP Theo Francken apologized on Monday “to people who felt offended” by an interview he gave on Saturday to Israeli television i24, while maintaining his criticism of Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and the government.
In a long article on Facebook, the former Federal Secretary of State explains the ins and outs of this interview, at the end of which he said that Mr. De Croo was accusing Israel of war crimes without doing anything against anti-Semitism in Belgium . “It’s the straw that breaks an already completely full camel,” he added in a mixture of English and Dutch.
Mr. De Croo had qualified this criticism as factually incorrect, given the measures taken by Belgium to combat anti-Semitism, and criticized the elected official for electoralism.
Also read Mini-diplomatic crisis: Hamas “appreciates” De Croo’s comments, which maintains them
On Facebook, Theo Francken claims to have received a very large number of angry and hateful reactions. He explains at length his vision of the conflict and acknowledges that his interview could have been better. “I take this incident as a good lesson, both in substance and form. I apologize to those who felt offended. » But the elected opposition official maintains that the federal government would have adopted a “unilaterally anti-Israel attitude”, that anti-Semitic slogans would be “tolerated” during the demonstrations and that the Prime Minister would be “particularly poorly placed to teach a lesson to Israel.”
During a trip Thursday and Friday to the Middle East in the company of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Mr. De Croo denounced the acts of terrorism by Hamas, reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself, within the limits of international law, and said Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip. Israel, which considers acting in accordance with international law, triggered a diplomatic incident after these remarks.
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