Israel Matzav

The end of Austrian-Israeli relations?

There are elections being held in Austria on Sunday, and Austria's relations with Israel hang in the balance. The polls indicate that the Orwellian-named 'Freedom party' could garner as much as 20% of the vote and be a part of the ruling coalition. If that were to happen, Israel would likely break diplomatic relations with Austria.

Heinz-Christian Strache, who leads the Freedom Party, took part in paramilitary activities with neo-Nazis in the late 1980s and has been known to use the Nazi salute.

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In 2000, the inclusion of the Freedom Party in the Austrian government prompted Israel to recall its ambassador to Vienna.

Then-prime minister Ehud Barak said the party's presence in the government "should outrage every inhabitant of the world."

"The Jewish people, wherever it may be, led by the State of Israel, will never allow the world to conduct business as usual in light of the events in Austria and their possible implications," Barak said at the time.

In a telephone interview with The Jerusalem Post last week, Dan Ashbel, Israel's ambassador in Vienna, said, "We are very concerned about the situation and parties who are xenophobic and base their policies on xenophobia. It is a danger and it is a very sad fact that this repeats itself."

The Freedom Party is campaigning using anti-immigrant slogans, such as "Asylum fraud means a flight home," and is exploiting anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiments to win votes.

But like all modern-day anti-Semites, the 'Freedom Party' claims that it isn't anti-Semitic - it 'just' opposes Israel. And it has a useful idiot named 'rabbi' Moshe Aryeh Friedman who serves as its token Jew.

"The rabbi is a good friend of mine... Why, we've even had him over to the house!" said John Gudenus, a Freedom Party politician who has been convicted of denying the Holocaust. In Austria, it is unlawful to cast doubt on the extermination of European Jewry as a historical fact.

On Tuesday, the Freedom Party held a press conference to announce a parliamentary inquiry into the expulsion of Friedman's children from Vienna's oldest Jewish school. Raimund Fastenbauer, general secretary of the [Jewish] community, told the Post "the Freedom Party is giving assistance to Mr. Friedman."

Does the name Moshe Aryeh Friedman ring a bell for any of you? Recall this picture:

And guess why Friedman's kids have been expelled from the local Jewish school. Friedman is a modern-day kapo.

Fastenbauer said the move was justified because Friedman failed to pay school fees and because of his participation in the World Without Zionism conference.

Friedman "is educating his children with Holocaust revisionist views. He is not a chief rabbi and has no followers. He is a crook," Fastenbauer said.

Ariel Muzicant, president of the Austrian Jewish community, said the Freedom Party, as "a party with closeted Nazis, is not acceptable as a governing partner."

I know many of you may be wondering why the name Jorge Haider has not appeared yet in this post. Yes, you recall correctly, Haider did found the 'Freedom Party.' But he broke off from it in 2005 and founded a new party called the 'Alliance for Austria's future.' Their slogan is 'Austria for the Austrians. For your sake.' A Gallup poll shows them garnering 8% of the vote - double their total in the 2006 elections.

Over the course of the last four months, Austria has been proven to be shielding a Nazi war criminal and has entered into a huge natural gas deal with Iran claiming that it has 'no moral obligation to Israel.'

The problem with the Austrians is that for 65 years, the World has allowed them to cling to the myth that they too were 'victims' of the Nazis. Unlike the Germans, their Austrian cohorts were never made to pay reparations and were never punished for their willing and eager role in the annihilation of much of World Jewry. The myth of victimhood that the Austrians - who raised and nurtured Adolph Hitler YMS"H (may his name be obliterated) - have perpetuated as part of their national psyche has now come full circle. The Austrians - together with Iran - are apparently ready to try again.

And the World remains silent.

UPDATE 9:04 PM

Preliminary results of the poll are now in.

The SORA Institute for Social Analysis and Research said the Social Democrats had 29.8 percent of the vote, according to its preliminary projections after 82.7 percent of ballots had been counted.

In second place was the People's Party, with a projected 25.6 percent of the vote, followed by the country's two right-wing groups - the Freedom Party with 18 percent, and the Alliance for the Future of Austria with 11 percent.

The institute said the margin of error for its projection so far was plus or minus 0.5 percent - putting the combined results for the two right-wing parties close to the count for the Social Democrats.

At this point, the two right-wing parties were not expected to join forces due to resistance from Freedom Party chief Heinz-Christian Strache.

However, Joerg Haider, leader of the Alliance for the Future of Austria, has suggested it is something worth thinking about. And Strache on Sunday suggested he was interested in becoming chancellor.

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With no party projected to win an outright majority, a coalition would need to be formed.

Social Democrat leader Werner Faymann has rejected the possibility of joining forces with either right-wing party.

That isn't going to leave him too many choices, is it? Especially when you take into account that his coalition with the People's Party just broke up! But what's worse is that many Austrians are pretending that the vote for the extreme right parties isn't meaningful:

"We don't have more right-oriented voters than in 2006, when they gained 15 percent together," political commentator Peter Filzmaier said in an pre-election interview. "It's because of a negative mood of frustration, of political mistrust of the grand coalition."

Yeah, right. Can you imagine what would happen in the US if the Klan ran on the ballot and got a third of the vote? I didn't think so.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:39 PM