’This is truly a scandal’’, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, Director General of the European Jewish Association (EJA), said after a Belgian insurance company refused to renew the insurance of a Jewish kindergarten run by the association in the EU area of Brussels.
The company claimed the risk of a terror attack on the school was too high.
According to an EJA spokesperson, ''the insurance agent contacted us a few days ago with the unpleasant news that the insurance company we’ve worked with up to now is not prepared to extend the kindergarten’s insurance policy, in the current situation, due to the high risk entailed by a Jewish institution.” "We will certainly keep looking for an insurance company that will agree to provide us with a policy," the spokesperson said.
“It is truly a scandal,” Rabbi Margolin said. “First and foremost, not enough is being done in order to secure Jewish institutions throughout Europe, despite our repeated requests and warnings, and then insurance companies are using the security situation as an excuse in order not to insure kindergartens,'' he stressed.
“This is the bizarre and cynical reality facing Jewish communities across Europe,” he added.
Rabbi Margolin, who is also director of the Rabbinical Center of Europe, has called on all European governments and leaders of EU institutions to provide security to all Jewish institutions that would satisfy insurance companies, and establish an alternative insurance mechanism that would secure any institution that might fall victim to anti-Semitic attacks.
"In the meantime, we are also calling on European governments to make sure that this issue of protecting the Jews in their countries stays on the agenda. The refusal to insure a kindergarten just because it is Jewish should sound loud alarms for all of Europe’s leaders and stir them to take action.”