Thursday, June 24, 2010
[The following, by Vienna-based veteran anti-fascist journalist Karl Pfeifer, is cross-posted from Z Word.]
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.
Thanks for posting this article and for including Schuster-Godwin's address. Here is the e-mail I just sent him.
Gordon Bronitsky
Dear Mr. Schuster:
I was saddened to read that 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. My late mother was born in Vienna in 1910--a Jew. As I grew up I heard all her stories about the deep and innate antisemitism of Vienna, the anti-Jewish riots at the medical school in the 1930s that she literally lived through, and how she finally left Vienna in 1935 after marrying my father, who had been a medical student at the University of Vienna. To the end of her days, she remembered with great bitterness that when she left, the city of Vienna, where she had been born, and her parents, and their parents, and their parents, that city, the city of the Blue Danube, forced her to sign a statement that she wouldn't return and become a Jewish burden on the city. In the 1930s, the Nazis said, Jews to Palestine. Now, the city of Vienna, the city of Wilhelm Marr, Karl Lueger, Hansjorg Haider, Bruno Kreisky and so many more Jew-haters, is saying Jews out of Palestine. Nothing has changed. All that talk of the changes in modern Vienna was just Wiener Schmäh, nothing more. Nothing has changed.
Gordon
Gordon Bronitsky, PhD
Well put, Gordon.