It’s not uncommon to see camouflage on the high street in Belgium. It is a peculiarly Belgian reflex: when the state feels the strain, it reaches for the army.

This week, the federal government has done so once more. Soldiers have been deployed to bolster security around Jewish sites and neighbourhoods in Brussels and Antwerp, following a spate of clumsy but troubling attacks across Belgium and the Netherlands. Synagogues have been targeted with arson and a Jewish school struck by an explosion. Mercifully, no one has been injured and the damage has been minor. Yet the intent is clear, and the authorities have been quick to identify the incidents as anti-Semitic acts.

Belgium’s cities, and Brussels in particular, have in recent years acquired a reputation for lawlessness

Belgium’s cities, and Brussels in particular, have in recent years acquired a reputation for lawlessness

After deploying the army, Theo Francken, Belgium’s effective and plain-talking defence minister, declared Antwerp ‘a little safer again and the Jewish community too’. One suspects the reassurance is aimed as much at a jittery public as the Jewish community itself. While the attacks were amateurish – the work, it seems, of poorly organised youths rather than seasoned extremists – they have taken place in a country already uneasy........

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