Belgium: Say Goodbye to Christmas Markets

Hat tip Creeping Sharia and Voice of Europe

This article first appeared in New English Review.

Brugges Christmas Winter Market

For several years now, Mercedes Benz in the US holds a sale they call, the “Winter Event”. Not the Christmas event, mind you, but the “Winter Event”. I guess since they are not celebrating Christmas or Hanukkah, they must be celebrating the cold, snow, and ice.

Ditto for the Belgian city of Brugges, which is now re-naming its Christmas market “the Winter Market”, so as not to offend other religions. Of course, we all know that there is only one religion that we have to worry about offending since the results can be deadly. Christmas markets in Berlin and Strasbourg have learned that the hard way in the past couple of years.

Brugges is not the first Belgian city to cave in to Islamic sensitivities as the Voice of Europe article points out. But what can we expect from the country that British UKIP leader and British delegate to the European Parliament, Nigel Farage, calls, “half a country”? As we speak, their government has fallen thanks to their misguided agreement to sign onto the UN Global Compact on Migration, which was signed this month in Morocco. Credit the Flemish parties like Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest-VB) and Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (New Flemish Alliance-N-VA) for leading the opposition to the pact.

The sad fact is that Belgium is a hot spot for radical jihadists in Europe. The infamous Brussels district of Molenbeek was the center of operations for Arab terrorists who struck Paris and Brussels and found refuge and safe houses right under the nose of the police who were searching for them.

In addition, just this week, we learned that under the new state secretary for migration and asylum, Palestinian “asylum-seekers” from Gaza are streaming into Belgium much to the worry of Belgian Jews. The Flemish-language Jewish news outlet, Joods Actueel reported the story as well as a video by the previous secretary for migration and asylum, Theo Francken (of N-VA), who complained that his successor has opened the floodgates, and that Belgian Jews should indeed be worried for their safety.

We now know that the jihadists are going to target Europe’s Christmas markets. Rather than transform them into some sort of celebration of the month of December, they should be maintained as they are, security provided, and certain foreign populations advised that if Christmas offends them, they can return to their home countries, where they don’t have to be bothered by it all. This current trend will  not save lives. It will only embolden the terrorists as a sign of weakness on our part.