I have a nuanced position on the Aalst carnival which on one hand does not portray all of the 80,000 participants as hard-core anti-Semites, but on the other hand strongly condemns those that portrayed Jews as vermin and associated them with money.
This “and-and” statement is very important for me to be relayed properly. However, I noticed that both in the Belgian and in the Israeli press my statement is often cut in half with some newspapers saying that I have “absolutely no problem with the floats” while others say that “I strongly condemn the carnival”.
However the truth is that BOTH statement are correct but that they can not be seen separately from each other. They both have the same weight to me meaning that the anti-Semitic portrayals are vile and disgusting while at the same time it is important that we not stigmatise every participant at the carnival for the egregious behavior of a minority of fools.
So there you have it, nuance is not always easy to bring across but I implore people to see it that way.
