Austria has seen a spate of antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents over the last few days, including barring of Israelis from restaurants and campsites and the pro-Palestine hijacking of a music concert.
On Saturday, six pro-Palestine activists disrupted the speech of Vice-Chancellor Andres Babler during the opening of the Salzburg Festival and shouted “Blood on your hands!” The incident raised significant questions about the event’s security, given the six protesters were wearing fake staff IDs and were able to enter easily.
Security has now been tightened, according to festival director Lukas Crepaz. However, various Austrian papers and figures raised the question of what would have happened had the activists been armed.
Austrian paper Kurier spoke with one of the activists, David Sonnenbaum, who ran onto stage with red-painted hands. “I was amazed, myself, at how easy it was,” he said.
No one apparently noticed that the forged ID cards bore the words, “Salzburger Festspeiben” [Salzburg Festival, incorrectly spelled] instead of the correct text “Salzburger Festspiele.” Background checks had clearly not been carried out, as the names on the ID cards were fictitious. The six activists were arrested and an investigation is underway.
Jewish life in Austria
In a press release, the president of the Jewish Community (IKG) of Salzburg, Styria, and Carinthia, Elie Rosen, said “Jewish life in Austria must not become the collateral damage of political agitation.”
Rosen called the disruption of the opening of the Salzburg Festival a “targeted political provocation, carried by openly anti-Israel rhetoric.”
In a separate incident last week, an Israeli man, Nissan Dekalo, and his wife were denied entry to Camping Dr. Lauth, a camp site in Ehrwald, Tyrol, Austria when they tried to park their mobile home. Their stay was intended as a celebration for their 25th wedding anniversary.
Dekalo told N12 that when the couple tried to register at the campsite and showed their Israeli passports, they were denied entry and told “We have no place for Jews here.” The two were made to leave and had to find another location.
He wrote on Facebook “You get a place, connect to the infrastructure and then go to the reception, [they ask you for your] passport please, and then the face changes, this is no place for Israelis, you should leave. We try to understand innocently if they had a bad experience with Israelis before, but no, it’s about Gaza [sic].”
The campsite operators told Jüdische Allgemeine “I don’t want to discuss with you on the phone right now. These people should much rather take care of the many children in Gaza. Otherwise, there is nothing to say.”
Dekalo, a resident of the Gaza border community of Kibbutz Nahal Oz, was the deputy of the kibbutz’s security squad commander during the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre. He defended the kibbutz for 13 hours while his wife and children hid in the protected space.
Also last week, a group of Israeli classical musicians claimed they were refused service in a pizzeria in Vienna because they were speaking Hebrew.
The three musicians – Amit Peled, Julia Gurvitch, and Hagai Shaham – were ordering in Pizzeria Ristorante Ramazotti when the waiter asked what language they were speaking, Peled recalled on X/Twitter.
“I answered, ‘Hebrew of course.’ He looked me directly in the eye and said without hesitation: ‘In that case, leave. I’m not serving you food.’”
“The initial shock and humiliation were profound. But what struck us even more deeply was what came next – or rather what didn’t. The people around us were clearly startled, some offered sympathetic glances... and then, quietly, they went back to their dinners, their conversations, their wine – as thought nothing had happened.”
“Welcome to Europe 2025,” he added.