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Former Austrian leader says far-right supported pro-Jewish policy

During a visit to Israel, Sebastian Kurz insisted that the Freedom Party were "extremely supportive” of his stances on Jews and Israel.

Former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (right) speaks with journalist and author Eldad Beck in Tel Aviv, on Jan. 9, 2025. Photo by Canaan Lidor.
Former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (right) speaks with journalist and author Eldad Beck in Tel Aviv, on Jan. 9, 2025. Photo by Canaan Lidor.

As Austria’s Freedom Party pursues a controversial path back to power, the country’s former leader, Sebastian Kurz, told Israelis last week that the Freedom Party wholeheartedly supported his pro-Jewish and pro-Israel policies.

“The truth is that everything we did, they were extremely supportive,” Kurz, who was chancellor for two years until 2019, said about the Freedom Party during a Q&A he gave at the Jabotinsky Institute in Tel Aviv on Thursday.

He spoke during the launch of a new book by journalist Eldad Beck about Israeli-Austrian relations. The event was attended by dozens of people, including Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana and Dr. Iddo Netanyahu, author, playwright and brother of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Kurz, a staunch ally of Israel and Austria’s Jewish community, was leader of Austria’s center-right People’s Party. It was then larger than the Freedom Party, which was the junior coalition partner. The Freedom Party won the largest share of the vote in the 2024 legislative elections and its leader was tasked with putting together a coalition.

The Freedom Party was founded in 1956 by a former SS soldier. Its leaders and members have been responsible for a steady stream of scandals involving antisemitic speech and Nazi imagery. It has championed banning the construction of mosques, a shutdown of immigration and a prohibition on ritual slaughter and public prayers.

On Thursday, tens of thousands of people protested across Austria against a Freedom Party-led coalition. At a rally in Vienna by approximately 25,000 demonstrators, some held signs reading: “We don’t want right-wing extremism Austria” and “Never again is now,” Austrian newspaper Der Standard reported.

In 2018, the Austrian media exposed the prevalence of antisemitic limericks and Holocaust jokes in university fraternities affiliated with the Freedom Party, forcing a former official, Udo Landbauer, to resign his government post.

At the book launch, Beck asked Kurz whether Israelis and Jews should be concerned about a Freedom Party-led Austrian government.

“I don’t comment on Austrian day-to-day politics since I left government, so I also will not do it here,” said Kurz. But, looking back, he said, “All the decisions we made on supporting the Jewish community in Vienna; the support for Israel; the support for the security of Israel; the law on the citizenship for the descendants of victims of the Shoah—all these things were with the support of the Freedom Party.”

This is “just important to say,” Kurz added, “because it would feel a bit unfair for me if there’s an impression that it was what we did, and they were against it, and we convinced them. It was not like this. There was always full support.”

In last year’s legislative elections in Austria, the Freedom Party, led by Herbert Kickl, topped national polls for the first time. Last week, it began negotiations with the People’s Party, this time as the senior coalition partner, to form a government.

The Jewish Community of Vienna has consistently warned against the rise of the Freedom Party to power. Oskar Deutch, community president, said in a statement last week that a “Freedom Party chancellor affiliated  with extremism would be the democratic face of an anti-democratic attitude.”

“The fact that a possible coalition would be democratically legitimate cannot disguise this,” he said, adding that this would be “not only worrying for Austria but also represents a danger for the European Union.” 

All forces “committed to humanism are therefore called upon to be particularly vigilant,” he said.

Austrian Holocaust survivors, including writer Karl Pfeifer, have vocally opposed the Freedom Party, calling it a “neo-Nazi movement.”

Karl Pfeifer, a Viennese Jewish Holocaust survivor who grew up in Budapest, outside Vienna’s Jewish Museum, on Feb. 17, 2013. Photo by Canaan Lidor.

Some Austrian Jews have been sympathetic to the Freedom Party, including David Lasar, a former lawmaker for the party. “The Freedom Party is the best way for us in Austria and also the best for Israel,” he told i24 News in December 2016.

Israel has kept the Freedom Party at arms’ length, declining to host its officials and refraining from holding public meetings between Israeli officials and party representatives.

Beck credited Kurz for his role in what many view as the Austrian state’s shift vis-a-vis Israel and the Jewish People.

Under successive governments until the early 2000s, Austria had maintained that it was a victim of Nazi Germany, despite the enthusiastic reception that the Nazis received and the complicity of the Austrian People in the Holocaust. It had resisted paying restitution for the Holocaust as a result before agreeing to pay more than $1 billion in 2005.

For decades, Austria had subsequently displayed disregard and, at times, hostility to Israel.

Former Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, who was Jewish, became the first Western leader to officially recognize the PLO in 1979 when he hosted Yasser Arafat, then-leader of the Palestinian National Authority.

In 2015, Austrian President Heinz Fischer visited Teheran, becoming the first European head of state to visit Iran since 2004. Austria had resisted abiding by EU sanctions on Iran for years beforehand.

Kurz reversed these tendencies and ordered that the Israeli flag be flown over the federal chancellery in 2021 amid exchanges of fire between Hamas and Israel. Iran’s then-foreign minister canceled a planned visit to Vienna over this. Under Kurz, the Austrian parliament unanimously adopted an amendment to the Citizenship Act that made it easier for Holocaust survivors and their descendants to naturalize in Austria.

Beck’s Hebrew-language book, “A Late Reconciliation: The Story of the Turbulent Austria-Israel Relations,” explores this reversal and Kurz’s role. The former chancellor now visits Israel regularly because he and entrepreneur Shalev Hulio own a local cybersecurity startup in Tel Aviv.

“It always feels good to be here and to be part of this spirit, of course,” he said of Israel. “Oct. 7 changed a lot. I’m always impressed by how resilient the people are, how resilient the country is.”

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