This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer, a veteran anti-fascist and journalist based in Vienna.
The city of Vienna launched a promotional campaign with the slogan “Wien ist anders”, “Vienna is different.” And Vienna after the Second World War was different, insofar as it did not welcome back its former Jewish citizens and tolerated antisemitism in politics and media for several decades.
After the publication of Carl Schorske’s book “Fin de siècle in Vienna,” the city of Vienna discovered that the world wants to know more about the flowering of culture in Vienna - and those Jews who contributed to it. Since then the city of Vienna has built a Jewish Museum and Michael Häupl, the Social democratic mayor of Vienna, condemned the antisemitic election campaign in 2001 by the FPÖ of the late Jörg Haider.
Therefore it was a surprise to the Jewish community when the Vienna City Council (Wiener Gemeinderat) voted unanimously on an anti-Israel resolution initiated by Omar al Rawi, a Social Democratic member of city council.
Erwin Javor and Peter Menasse of the Jewish periodical “Nu” sent three letters to Godwin Schuster, the Social Democratic President of the Council. They received no answer.
The first letter:
We call upon the Vienna city council in continuation of its foreign policy activities and in line with its unanimous Resolution of May 31, 2010 condemning Israel to consider the following resolution:
“The world has learnt with shock and horror about the massacre of the Uzbek Minority in Kyrgyzstan in which at least 124 victims lost their lives. The Viennese city council condemns this brutal behaviour against peaceful people.”
Kindly transmit this demand to the members of Vienna city council
With best regards
Erwin Javor, Publisher NU
Peter Menasse, editor NU
Second letter:
Regarding the new foreign policy engagement of the Vienna City Council, we propose the following resolution:
“The world has learnt with shock and horror the news of the execution of the Sunni leader Abdolmalek Rigi in an Iranian jail. The City Council of Vienna condemns this brutal behaviour against dissenters.”
We take note of the fact that our draft resolution sent to you several days ago concerning the massacre of the Uzbek Minority in Kyrgyzstan has apparently not been dealt with.
However we hope that the foreign policy engagement of the City Council of Vienna will not be restricted exclusively to the condemnation of the State of Israel. If this is not the case, we would be interested to know the reason why.
Hoping for an answer now.
The third letter:
Today we send a further proposal for a resolution by the City Council of Vienna. Concerning the recent foreign policy engagement of this board, we propose the following resolution:
“According to the umbrella organization of Kurdish Associations in Austria, Kurds are terrorised in Turkey by its Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who said that Kurds would ‘drown in their own blood’. The City Council of Vienna expresses its consternation and calls upon the Turkish government to grant the Kurdish population full minority rights.”
We would like remind you that we still have received no answer to our two previous suggestions for foreign policy resolutions. Is only Israel attracting the attention of Vienna City council? How does it come to this peculiar and so far unique distinction by the City council?
Still waiting for your answer
With best regards etc.
Foreigners should consider the slogan “Vienna is different” as a dangerous threat. And you can inform the president of Vienna City Council G. Schuster - godwin.schuster@spw.at - that antisemitism manifests itself by applying one standard to the State of Israel and another to the behaviour of any other nation.
I sent the following email:
Dear Mr. Schuster:
Thanks to the vigilance of Karl Pfeifer, a veteran anti-fascist and journalist based in Vienna, I got to read about the fruit of the latest anti Israel activism yielded by your city Council.
I will not expand upon the suspect nature and motivation behind such a resolution. I will only provide you with two quotes which I hope you will read with some reflection.
The first, by Andre Glucksmann:
“…On the scales of world opinion, some Muslim corpses are light as a feather, and others weigh tonnes. Two measures, two weights…. why do the 200,000 slaughtered Muslims of Darfur not arouse even half a quarter of the fury caused by 200-times fewer dead in Lebanon? Must we deduce that Muslims killed by other Muslims don’t count? This conclusion has its weak spots, because if the Russian Army - Christian, and blessed by their popes - razes the capital of Chechnian Muslims… killing tens of thousands of children in the process, this doesn’t count either. The Security Council does not hold meeting after meeting, and the Organization of Islamic States piously averts its eyes. From that we may conclude that the world is appalled only when Israelis kill a Muslim.
Should we thus presume that the public at large implicitly endorses the ideas that Ahmadinedjad shouts at the top of his lungs? And yet so many of those sceptics who display consternation over bombings in Lebanon seem shocked if you suspect them of anti-Semitism. I want to trust them. We don’t want to imagine that the entire planet is mired in anti-Jewish paranoia! But then the matter becomes even more puzzling. What is the source of this hemiplegia? Why is the world frightened by Israeli bombs alone?”
http://www.signandsight.com/features/894.html
The second by the now deceased Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish:
“Do you know why we Palestinians are famous? Because you are our enemy. The interest in us stems from the interest in the Jewish issue. The interest is in you, not in me. So we have the misfortune of having Israel as an enemy, because it enjoys unlimited support. And we have the good fortune of having Israel as our enemy, because the Jews are the center of attention. You’ve brought us defeat and renown.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/11/mahmoud_darwish_poet_laureate_of_the
You can draw your own conclusions about the meaning concealed of this confession.
Respectfully,