The Austrian Embrace
Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen and Chancellor Sebastian Kurz with Rabbi Arthur Schneier during a ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht in Vienna, Austria, November 9,
Noa Landau writes in Haaretz:
With his swept-back hair and blue eyes, Austria’s young Chancellor Sebastian Kurz was featured on the cover of Newsweek last week, with the magazine calling him a rising star in the firmament of global politics.
The extensive profile described the conservative leader as an ambitious activist who has garnered impressive support within his country, mainly among young people.
However, a stain hovers over this optimistic portrayal, in the form of his rhetorical flirtation with his country’s dark past and his tight alliance with the extreme right-wing Freedom Party and the Israeli-Jewish boycott of its cabinet members. The continuing boycott has become a persistent blemish on the shining image of the rising star, and it appears that he’s determined to remove it. Over the last two weeks, in the shadow of events commemorating the eightieth anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Chancellor made some gestures to the Jewish community.
The first is the hosting in 10 days of a large international conference in Vienna, called “Europe beyond anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism – securing Jewish life in Europe.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to attend. If he does so, this will be the first visit by an Israeli prime minister since 1997 when Netanyahu also visited the country. Before that, only Golda Meir and Presidents Moshe Katzav and Shimon Peres had gone to Austria on official visits.
A few days before that, the chancellor announced that his government would finance the erection of a monument commemorating 66,000 Austrian Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Kurz approved the granting of citizenship to descendants of these victims.
Making an exception, Austria will allow children and grandchildren of Holocaust victims to hold dual citizenship. In an interview he gave to the Jewish Chronicle, Kurz said that Austria wanted to give them a chance to become citizens if they wished to do so, but in the same interview he again defended his decision to form an alliance with the Freedom Party.
Last month President Reuven Rivlin was the focus of Austrian pressure to obtain Israel’s stamp of kashrut, while the Freedom Party was conducting a stormy campaign to force Jews to obtain permits in order to buy kosher meat. On his way back from a state visit to Denmark, the president stopped in Austria and met his counterpart President Alexander Van der Bellen at the airport.
An official statement they later released said that they had talked about the strong relations between the two countries and that Rivlin had noted his appreciation for the warm relations between Van der Bellen and the local Jewish community. It was reported that the Austrian president said at their meeting that Austria bears joint responsibility for the terrible crimes which led to the flight of Austria’s Jews.
However, there was another part of their conversation which has not yet been reported. Haaretz has learned that Rivlin was surprised when Van der Bellen wondered whether Israel would reconsider its boycott of the Freedom Party’s cabinet members. Rivlin was not expecting such a direct appeal, which showed that the Austrians were well acquainted with diverse political positions in Israel, having designated Rivlin as a major opposition figure.
In response, Rivlin told his counterpart at length why he objects to normalization of relations with those ministers, given the party’s anti-Semitic roots and the current accusations by Jewish leaders in Austria that the party is stoking anti-Semitism.