Analysis: Bye bye Austrian-Israeli relations?

With Austrian far-right resurgence, will Israel cut diplomatic ties again?

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT, BERLIN
J?rg Haider Jorg 224 88 (photo credit: AP [file])
J?rg Haider Jorg 224 88
(photo credit: AP [file])
The success of two far-right parties in Austria, who together got almost 30% of the vote in Sunday's general election, jolted Israel's Foreign Ministry into issuing a rebuke of rising anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic sentiments in the Alpine nation. "We are very concerned about the increased power of people who promote hatred of foreigners and Holocaust denial and support neo-Nazis, Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said shortly before Rosh Hashana. "We consider this a disturbing development and are following the matter with great attention." At the same time, Palmor stressed that it is still too early to reevaluate Israel's diplomatic relations with Austria. While the Social Democrats, who won 29.71% of the vote, reject a coalition with the two extremist parties - the Freedom Party and the Alliance for the Future of Austria - the conservative People's Party is flirting with both of them. "Arithmetical possibilities that are still possible," is how Josef Pröll, the new head of the People's Party, which secured 25.61% of the vote, described a merger with the two xenophobic parties. Pröll, who in 2006 called the Freedom Party "soccer hooligans" hollering in a stadium, seems to be driven by political opportunism and a radical-right faction within his party. Under an Austrian law passed last year, 16-year-olds are allowed to vote in national elections. The Freedom Party showed a keen ability to court these young voters, primarily through the efforts of Heinz Christian Strache, the party's chancellor candidate. Strache, a former dental technician, has an affinity for neo-Nazi groups and in the past attended events organized by the Viking Youth in Germany, a radical nationalistic group that has since been outlawed. He energetically campaigned in discos and other youth venues, attracting a sizable number of the 200,000 eligible teenage voters, observers say. An Institute for Social Research and Analysis poll showed the Freedom Party to be the most popular party among Austrians under 30. That Strache's hatred-of-foreigner's message resonated with significant numbers of blue-collar workers and a large segment of Austrian youth does not bode well for future Austrian-Israeli relations. While stoking hardcore anti-Muslim sentiments during the election ("The minaret has no place in Austria"), Strache's party supports the huckster "rabbi" Moshe Aryeh Friedman, who seeks to abolish the State of Israel and who kissed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the Holocaust denial conference in Teheran in 2006. The first Austrian-Israeli diplomatic divorce took place when Israel recalled its ambassador during the period of Kurt Waldheim's presidency from 1986 to 1992 to protest his involvement in Nazi war crimes in the Balkans. Next, during the 2000 election, then-Israeli foreign minister David Levy said "the very moment" that the Freedom Party enters the government, Israel would recall its ambassador again. The People's Party decision in 2000 to form a coalition with Jörg Haider, who then headed the Freedom Party, prompted Levy to carry out that threat. Relations were resumed only in July 2003, a year after the Freedom Party lost popular support in another national election, and Austria offered compensation for Holocaust survivors and their descendants. Haider split with the Freedom Party in 2005 because of internal strife, and founded the Alliance for the Future of Austria. Haider is a notorious admirer of Nazi ideology, and has praised former members of the Waffen SS, which played a crucial role in murdering Europe's Jews during World War II. The inclusion of the Freedom Party and Alliance in a new government would probably leave Israel no choice but to withdraw its ambassador once again. David Levy, during the second break in Austrian-Israeli relations, said, "The meaning of a Jewish state is not just to remember, but also to remind." A quintessential litmus test for Austria to embrace its responsibility for the crimes of the Holocaust, according to critics in Israel, Austria and the United States, is to stop doing business with the anti-Semitic regime in Teheran whose principal foreign policy goal is "to wipe Israel off the map." Austria's no-holds-barred trade policy with Iran reached its climax in April 2007, when the partially state-owned energy giant OMV signed a tentative €22 billion gas deal with the Iranian regime. On Saturday and Sunday, OMV will be sponsoring a gas conference in Teheran. Sponsorship of the event by OMV, Anglo-Dutch Shell and the French company Total was first reported by The Jerusalem Post last month. Shell has since pulled out of the event. Israel's Ambassador to Austria Dan Ashbel delivered a talk in Vienna last week, hosted by The Israel Project, on "Israel's Quest for Peace Amid the Growing Threat of Iran and its Proxies." He said one has to consider "whether one should place moral standards on the economy and not do any more business with Teheran." He urged the Austrian government to flex its muscles to prevent closure of the OMV-Iran gas contract. "The government could do something; after all, OMV is not a purely private company," said Ashbel. Laura Kam, a senior adviser to The Israel Project, whose aim is to furnish the public with impartial information about Israel and the Middle East, told the Post that "Austria's partnership with Iran, which works to prop up that extremist regime, could mean not only the death of thousands more Jews. It can cause Austria to lose its reputation in the world… by allowing the government to invest in business with Iran whose leaders are arming, funding and training terrorists who have shot close to 10,000 rockets and missiles at Israel since Israel gave up Gaza." After resisting intervention to stop the OMV-Iran deal, the People's Party seems to have changed its position. In an e-mail to the Post, Thomas Schmid, spokesman for the People's Party parliamentary group, wrote, "In our talks, we have repeatedly advised OMV to refrain from making binding agreements with Iran at this point in time. OMV has abided by this, and there is still only a preliminary contract with Iran." He added that, "Should Iran fail to agree to the latest E3 offer [a freeze in economic sanctions against Iran in return for a freeze in uranium enrichment], an offer that Austria and the entire EU support and which also has the complete support of the USA and which demands that Iran completely end uranium enrichment, we will negotiate a further tightening of sanctions." Yet the Social Democrats in Austria, who list the Israeli Labor Party and Meretz as "sister parties" on their Web site, have not requested that OMV retract its deal with Iran. Meretz MK Yossi Beilin, told the Post that Meretz is "very much against such a deal." He said that six months ago, while on a private visit to Austria, he told Social Democratic Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer and People's Party Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik that Meretz rejects such deals, that "are against the free interest of the world." He added that "we need to tighten sanctions against Iran." Beilin said that Gusenbauer and Plassnik asserted that the OMV contract is not a violation of sanctions. But Beilin said he believes the OMV agreement is a "breach of the spirit of the sanctions."