Austria was the toast of Israel yesterday. It won't last.
In a qualifying match for next year's European soccer championships, played in Vienna on Sunday night, Austria defeated Cyprus 31, enabling the Israelis to finish the qualifying tournament narrowly ahead of Cyprus, and make it through to the championship play-offs along with the Republic of Ireland, England and five other countries.
Yesterday's Hebrew newspapers were full of sports-page headlines of the "Thank you, Austria" variety, praising the Austrians for turning in a strong performance even though their championship challenge was already over.
This brief outbreak of pro-Austrian sentiment, firmly limited to the sports pages, hardly masks the crisis in relations between the two countries. In the wake of last week's success in the Austrian elections of Mr Jorg Haider and his far-right Freedom Party, Israel is threatening to "reassess" its relations with Austria. Mr Haider has retorted by terming Israel's behaviour "hysterical". Israel's clearly expressed hope is that Mr Haider's party, which won some 27 per cent in the elections, will not be invited to join the next coalition government.
"Don't bring these neo-Nazis into your government," the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr David Levy, urged last week. "If you do, we will re-evaluate our relations with Austria." The popularity of Mr Haider's party, committed in its leader's words to defending Austria against "parasites and criminals," was, said Mr Levy, "a stain on the Austrian people".
It is not yet clear whether Mr Haider will sit in government, but he has been swift to hit back at Israel. In two weekend Israeli television interviews, which he insisted on conducting in German, he told Israel to put its own house in order before interfering in Austrian political life.
The son of a Nazi party member, and a man who once described the Third Reich's employment policies as "sound" and SS veterans as "decent men with character", Mr Haider insists he is no anti-Semite. But in the wake of Israel's hysterical attack on him, he said last week: "There are a lot of people saying, `Now I know why anti-Semitism exists'."
Israel is now said to be boosting its efforts to encourage Austria's 9,000 to 10,000 Jews to emigrate. And some younger Jews, say communal leaders in Austria, are already packing their bags.
All eyes are now focused on the coalition negotiations. Asked what kind of "reassessment" they have in mind if Mr Haider joins the government, Israeli officials are cagey. The term, they say, can mean anything from a formal protest or brief ambassadorial recall to a complete severing of relations.
Reuters reports:
The head of Austria's Catholic Church urged his country yesterday to heed Israel's fear of a rise of "new hatred" in Austria, which he said still carried a burden from the Nazi era.
On a tour of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Cardinal Christoph Schonborn said: "I share the concerns of those who are worried about possible developments of new hatred."
"We must be very alert to what our neighbours, our friends, the other countries say about our country," the Archbishop of Vienna said. "We must not rebuke it from the beginning, so to speak, and fall back into a kind of self-pity."