Relief as Austria rejects a fascist for head of state

JEWISH LEADERS in Europe have expressed relief that Austrian voters rejected a far-right politician as president in Sunday’s election.

With 53.3 per cent of the vote, Alexander Van der Bellen — former spokesperson for Austria’s Green Party — pulled off a significant win against far-right candidate Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party, who took 46.7 per cent.

Moshe Kantor, President of the Brussels-based European Jewish Congress, said he was looking forward to working with Mr Van der Bellen. He joined others in “breathing a sigh of relief that the first openly racist and xenophobic head of state was not elected on our continent”.

Mr Kantor said it would have been a disaster for Austria and Europe had Mr Hofer won, because it “might have given a strong tailwind for other similar extremists, like the National Front leader, Marine Le Pen”.

The Conference of European Rabbis, headed by Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt of Moscow, said they were “delighted” with Mr Hofer’s defeat and hoped the results would “strengthen political forces in Europe which are committed to combat racism, antisemitism and xenophobia”.

In Germany, mainstream political leaders also were in a celebratory mood on Sunday night. For German Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union, the results of elections across Europe are potential harbingers of her own political future come next September.

Austria’s Jewish leaders had expressed concern about a possible Hofer presidency. Oskar Deutsch, head of the community, recently endorsed Mr Van der Bellen, despite the fact that some Austrian Jews reject the Green Party’s stand on the Middle East conflict. He insisted Mr Van der Bellen was clearly the preferred candidate.

The presidential post is mostly ceremonial, but a right-populist victory in Austria could have fed into what some pundits see as the growing political success of the far-right right across the continent.