PhilipCarmel was on a stroll with his daughter in the middle of Brussels last Sunday taking advantage of the warm summer weather when they stopped in front of the statue ofQueenElizabeth at the Placede l’Albertine. The Queen the wife of Prince Albert was known as a lover of music who distinguished herself in service to the nation during World War I when she tended to wounded soldiers on the front lines. But on this day in the capital of Belgium and the European Union the queen’s statue was decidedly off tune. Scrawled on the base were the hateful words “Murderers. Death to [Magen David].” The Saturday before up to 5 000 people had gathered at the same spot to protest Israel’s war against the terror group Hamas many of them shouting “Kill the Jews!” and smashing windows of storefronts and parked cars. But what struck Carmel — European policy advisor for the European Jewish Congress — more than the defacement was the fact that it hadn’t been cleaned a good 24 hours after the demonstrations. And then he remembered seeing in that same square just days before a municipal maintenance man driving a street cleaner tagged with the message “Free Palestine.” He had seen the same signs displayed proudly on the windshields of city buses. “There’s no fear anymore ” Carmel observed “even for people who need to hang on to their jobs.” Since the onset of Operation Protective Edge in early July Europe has been rocked by violent demonstrations that have crossed the line from “anti-Israel” to openly anti-Jewish. For years pro-Israel activists have claimed that the anti-Israel movement contained strong elements of traditional hatred for Jews and that the distinction between “anti-Zionist” and “anti-Jewish” was meaningless. Now the protesters have dropped the mask attacking Jewish institutions and openly calling for the death of Jews everywhere. The demonstrations have stretched from Poland in the east toParis in the west. In the central square in Krakow hundreds of demonstrators converged on a group of about 60 visiting students and proceeded to push them and spit on them while a priest proudly gave the “SiegHeil” salute. In Germany a leading imam of a Berlin mosque called for the death of all Israel’s Jews while a conglomeration of Muslims and leftists chanted “Jewish pigs come out and fight!” and “Jews to the gas chambers!”