Belgian police officer facing dismissal over threat to kill Jews

“If I were in Israel, frankly, I would do to the Jews what they do with the Palestinians — slaughter each and every one of them,” the officer wrote on Facebook, though he says his account was hacked.

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(JTA) — Dismissal proceedings have been launched against a Belgian police officer who said on Facebook that he would kill “each and every Jew.”

The mayor of Molenbeek, Belgium, Francoise Schepmans, initiated the proceedings against the officer, who was identified as Mohamed N., the French-language daily Belgian newspaper Le Soir reported Saturday. Molenbeek is located in the Brussels-Capital Region of Belgium.

The police officer, using the moniker Bebeto Gladiateur in a Facebook thread discussing the Armenian genocide, repeatedly tried to divert the conversation to a discussion about the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

“The word Jew itself is dirty. If I were in Israel, frankly, I would do to the Jews what they do with the Palestinians — slaughter each and every one of them,” he wrote.

Members of the thread reprimanded the officer continuously for his attempts to divert the conversation.

The officer claimed his Facebook account was hacked; later it was deleted.

“His words shocked me,” Schepmans told Le Soir. “I’ve never been ambiguous on this issue. I can’t tolerate such attitude of a municipal officer.”

Meanwhile, the website of the Brussels-based Contemporary Memory Foundation, which studies the history of Jews and Judaism in Belgium in the 20th century, was hacked Friday by hackers claiming to be from the Islamic State.

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