Israel To Limit Contact With Austrian Ministries Headed By Far-Right Party

Image by Getty Images
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s Foreign Ministry said it would limit its contact with the ministries in the new Austrian government headed by the far-right Freedom Party to the professional staff.
The Freedom Party holds the interior, defense and foreign ministries in a coalition government with the conservative People’s Party that was sworn in Monday. It garnered the third-highest vote total in the October elections behind the center-right People’s Party and the center-left Social Democrats.
A statement issued Monday by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs following the seating of the new Austrian government said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also currently serves as Israel’s foreign minister, “maintains, and will continue to maintain” direct contact with newly sworn-in Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.
The statement also said that Netanyahu has asked the ministry’s director-general “to carry out a professional review regarding the manner in which Israel will conduct itself vis-à-vis the new (Austrian) government.”
“At present, Israel will maintain working relations with the professional echelon of the government ministries headed by a minister from the Freedom Party,” the statement said. “The State of Israel wishes to emphasize its absolute commitment to the struggle against anti-Semitism and the commemoration of the Holocaust.”
The Freedom Party last joined the Austrian government in 2000. At the time, Israel recalled its ambassador from Austria and downgraded relations between the two countries.
Kurz, who at 31 has become Europe’s youngest leader, focused his campaign on the issue of limiting migration, while the Freedom Party ran on a hard-line anti-Islam platform. Austria accepted one of the highest proportions of refugees during the 2015 crisis.
The Jewish Community of Austria has said that the Freedom Party, which was founded in the 1950s by a former Nazi SS officer, is tainted by fascist tendencies and rhetoric, and that the anti-Islam party’s public rejection of anti-Semitism is lip service.
Some 9,000 Jews live in Austria, according to the Jewish Virtual Library figures for 2016, making them about 0.1 percent of the country’s population.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
- 2
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 3
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 4
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture In a Haredi Jerusalem neighborhood, doctors’ visits are free, but the wait may cost you
-
Fast Forward Chicago mayor donned keffiyeh for Arab Heritage Month event, sparking outcry from Jewish groups
-
Fast Forward The invitation said, ‘No Jews.’ The response from campus officials, at least, was real.
-
Fast Forward Latvia again closes case against ‘Butcher of Riga,’ tied to mass murder of Jews
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.