Behind the Headlines a Myth is Shattered

This large sprawling port city on the North Sea has practically the last shtetl left in the world. Within the city, in an area of a few square kilometers bordered by the Pelikanstroat and the Vestingstrood, some 12,000 Jews live today as their grandparents did in Vilna or Warsaw a century ago. There is a difference, however.

Belgium’s 40,000 Jews have since the end of World War II led relatively carefree lives. Their standard of living is one of the highest in Western Europe, unemployment is practically nil and anti-Semitism is a thing of the past. In Ann werp, Jews lead fully Jewish lives, complete with rabbinical and Hasidic courts, Jewish schools, kosher restaurants and even a half dozen Jewish newspapers. The Middle East is far away and though many Antwerp Jews speak fluent Hebrew, Israel for them is more a religious symbol than a political reality. The Jews of Antwerp live without a care or risk in the world.

But this placid, almost idyllic existence was cruelly and tragically shattered on a quiet, sleepy and warm Sunday afternoon that ended in a bloodbath. At 2:15 p.m. on July 27, a group of 40 children and adults were waiting patiently in front of the Agudat Israel communal center on the Lamorinierestroat; in the heart of the Jewish section, for the driver of their chartered bus to finish storing away their luggage. They were about to leave for summer comp.

The center of the city was practically empty on one of the first sunny Sundays of the year. The street itself was deserted except for a small cafe across from the communal center where a few elderly people, including a man who appeared to be an Arab, were drinking beer. The campers, ranging in ages from 12 to 15, were chatting with their parents and friends who had come to see them off.

BLOODY SUNDAY

Suddenly, the man who looked like an Arab got up from his seat and run towards the group. In each hand he held a grenade and when he got a few yards from the group he stopped, took aim and hurled the grenades. One rolled harmlessly under a parked car. The other one, however, exploded under the waiting bus demolishing its chassis. Shrapnel, pieces of glass and metal were strewn around and 20 people fell to the sidewalk in pools of blood.

One of them, David Kahane, 15, was losing blood rapidly. A few minutes later, while in an ambulance on his way to the hospital, his father, who was waiting with him, asked David, “Where does it hurt?” The youngster replied: “Everywhere father.” Those were his last words. A few minutes later he was dead.

The man who hurled the grenades, a 25-year-old Syrian, looked at the scene, turned around and began to run, as if aimlessly, towards the main avenue leading toward the railroad station on the Lange Leemstroat. But he ran so desperately and frantically that a police car cruising the area following the report of an attempted burglary, cornered him in the belief that they found the burglary suspect. The police car driver said later that the man was running so aimlessly, almost blindly without noticing the police car that he had to swerve to avoid hitting him.

UNCOVERING A TERRORIST PLOT

The man was taken to police headquarters where dozens of detectives and senior police officials converged from all over the country. An intensive interrogation began of the man who at first was believed to have committed a random act of terror and suffering from a psychosis. But as the interrogation continued, police began to uncover a terrorist plot, one of the most ambitious and ruthless in Western Europe.

Belgium, contrary to what people generally think, has an excellent police force. It has to be. Just north of Brussels the Western powers have their suppose military command headquarters, SHAPE. In a suburb of Brussels there is the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In Brussels itself there are the embassies of every major Western and Eastern country along with some of their intelligence and counter-intelligence agents.

The Middle East countries are also represented in Belgium. Most station their best operatives here to “work” in NATO and SHAPE headquarters and occasionally to spy on each other. In 1969 an Israeli agent was murdered in the center of Brussels, in the Place de Brouckere, the equivalent of Kikar Mougrabi or Kikar Zion, by an Arab whom, the Belgian police believed at the time, he was trying to manipulate.

But the man the Belgian police interrogation experts were dealing with in the aftermath of the Antwerp bloodbath was different than anyone they had ever dealt with before. He displayed a limited intelligence and he even failed to understand what was happening to him. He is reported to have asked his interrogators: “Why do you arrest me? I did not touch Belgians. I only killed Jews.”

He barely spoke a few words of English and even less French or German. Even the interpreter found it difficult to follow the man’s rambling statements. Nevertheless, the police managed to unravel the story of his crime.

REVEALS DETAILS OF TERRORIST PLANS

A resident of Rome, he had been contacted there by the “commanders” of his organization, “The Fatah Revolutionary Line,” on organization previously unknown, and told to buy a forged Moroccan passport. He picked the name of Zayed el-Nasser as his alias and came to Belgium several times before the bloody Sunday to “stake out the scene” and to find a likely target for a terrorist attack.

Brussels was obviously too big a city for him and the Jews were too inconspicuous. He turned to Antwerp where the Jews, most of whom still wear the traditional kaftan and often sport long beards and sideburns, stand out. He chose Antwerp where the Jewish quarter stands wide open to anyone but a diamond thief.

He last returned to Belgium on July 23 and moved into a hotel near Brussels’ central railway station, Gare du Midi. A few days later he was contacted, as he had been told he would be, by a German woman whom he had met earlier in Lebanon and again in Rome.

It was in a central Brussels square that the two met, exchanged passwords like in a cheap Hollywood spy story. His password was “Palestine,” to which the woman replied, “victory.” They then went to his hotel where she gave him the two Soviet-made grenades, the 9 mm pistol and the 18 bullets which police found on him at the time of his arrest.

By now the man, who later gave his real name as Abdel Wahid and said he was born in Damascus, was speaking freely. He provided a detailed description of the German woman. She is 23 years old, tall, with dark brown hair worn shoulder-length, dressed in jeans, a white blouse and a checkered cap. As for his motives, he tried to explain that “they (the Israelis) kill our children. There is no reason why we should not kill theirs.”

Over the next few days, his explanations become more explicit, according to Belgian sources. His organization, he said, was fighting “not only the Zionists but also the Palestinian traitors who want to lie down their arms and negotiate with Israel.”

In order to speed up the investigation, and some say, in order to show that Belgium has no sympathy whatsoever for the terrorists, the police generally right-lipped and secretive, released practically all the details connected with the investigation, including a picture of the arrested man.

SECOND TERRORIST NABBED

While police fanned out throughout the country and appealed to Interpol for help, a small Brussels hotelier reading his paper the following day, saw the name of the arrested man. A man named Zayed el-Nasser was staying at his hotel as well. It was a strange coincidence worth telling the police.

Within minutes investigators were searching the room. Under a carpet, they found two hand grenades, also Soviet-made, and a loaded pistol. When the occupant, the second Zayed el-Nasser, returned to his hotel that night, the police were waiting for him.

After a very short hesitation, he, too, was prepared to talk. His story was pretty similar to that heard in Antwerp. He, too, had bought a forged passport in Rome, a Tunisian one, and had used, apparently as a joke, the same name that his friend used. He, too, was a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Line, believed in the need to fight not only the Zionists but also the Palestinian traitors and he, too, had been in contact with a German woman.

It was she who had given him in Rome the money for his trip and his written instructions. These were simple: he was to throw his hand grenades into the main transit lounge at Brussels International Airport while passengers arriving from Israel aboard either El Al or the Belgian airline “Sabena” were crossing the hall.

He gave up his assignment when everything seemed to go wrong: first the plane, and he did note know exactly which, El Al or Sabena, arrived early; secondly, the hall was so crowded that he could not even hope to distinguish the Israeli-arriving passengers from the huge crowd milling in the passenger lounge.

His story threw a new light, a for more serious one, on what had first seemed a tragic but rather inept terrorist attack against a helpless, small group of people. The Belgian investigators drew the conclusion that the two men arrested, and at least two more accomplices hiding in Belgium, including the head of the group, were part of a major terrorist offensive aimed at Belgium.

The Belgians at once informed most of their European partners, and especially France, where the group was reported planning to strike next, of its findings. Belgian police officials asked Western Europe Forces for their cooperation to try to track down the remaining members of the gang, especially the German helpers.

In Belgium itself, security measures were taken to prevent possible additional attacks including the taking of hostages to have the prisoners released. It seems practically impossible to guard a whole country and security experts are openly nervous at the idea of what could happen next.

Meanwhile, the only place in Belgium which seems to have reverted back to its former life is Antwerp’s Jewish shtell. People there cry, weep and mourn the dead and the wounded. But on the Vestingstrood, the diamond center’s business is continuing as usual, “Zionists” are eyed suspiciously, and in the Nachtegalenpark (the park of the nightingales) elderly Jews take their grandchildren for walks in the fresh air while sipping sea out of a thermos bottle.