Preliminary Programme

In response to the Gaza flotilla raid in 2010 and the outbreak of the Gaza war in 2014, large pro-Palestinian demonstrations took place in Austria. Most of these protests were organised by Muslim-Turkish-organisations and a few pro-Palestinian left wingers. Up to 30.000 people participated, mainly Muslim immigrants and their descendants.
Even before the beginning of the demonstrations in 2014 several (right wing) politicians warned that antisemitic comments and actions might occur. Hence, the organisers posted that they would remove all antisemitic slogans and comments. Nevertheless, a lot of posters and banners were spotted during the demonstrations which are seen as antisemitic by many, e.g..: “Neonazi Israel”, “Erase Israel” or “Kindermörder Israel” (“child murderer Israel”). Either the organisers did not notice them or did not classify them as antisemitic. However, these (potentially) antisemitic slogans are closely related to debates about a “new” antisemitism in Austria in which especially Muslim immigrants were accused of being antisemitic. It seems that primarily anti-Muslim right wingers exploit these accusations to underline their anti-Islamic attitudes and to dissimulate the fact that antisemitism is also a phenomenon among non-Muslim Austrians.
In fact, it is not always clear whether anti-Israeli-comments are antisemitic or not. Thus, I speak in these cases of a “grey zone” between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, due to two facts: Firstly, there is a lack of information on motives and the background of the protagonists. Secondly, there are no clear and generally accepted criteria when anti-Zionism turns into antisemitism. Though, this problem is widely discussed among scholars of antisemitism.
This paper examines the debate about antisemitism and anti-Zionism and the difficulty of drawing a clear line between these two phenomena. I will present several criteria to assess potentially anti-Semitic actions or comments. These criteria should help to clarify especially those potential anti-Semitic slogans and comments which were documented during pro-Palestinian demonstrations in 2010 and 2014 in Austria. I will address the following questions in particular: Which potentially anti-Semitic statements appeared particularly often? Which anti-Semitic stereotypes were used to criticise Israel? How were they modified and adapted to fit in anti-Israeli comments? Is there any difference between Austrian leftists and Austrian with Turkish background in this matter? Under which circumstances is it possible to define an act or comment very clearly as anti-Semitic and in which cases is it not possible? Finally, I will discuss the importance of clear criteria and their limit of application, which can result from missing information on respective motives and background of the different pro-Palestinian protestors. (Show less)

Whereas in France the debate about antisemitism in Muslim communities focused on escalations in the suburbs, the British debate concentrated on left-wing anti-Semitism (‘salon anti-Semitism’) and on the danger of ‘Londonistan’, a term first used by French politicians to refer to Britain’s open asylum policy that, as some critics charged, made London a refuge for Islamist extremism. Some of them had entered the UK as asylum seekers from Arab countries in the 1980s, and were now using freedom of speech to demonize Israel, Jews and the US. Another focus was on frequent clashes of fundamentalist global Muslim student organizations based on the Muslim Brotherhood with Jewish students at some British universities. Various Muslim organizations and newspapers were also active in the Israel boycott movement, sometimes going as far as to demand a boycott of companies owned by British and American Jews. Since 2001, left wing organizations formed a coalition with Islamist organizations (=Stop the War Coalition) to demonstrate against the war in Iraq as well as against Israels politics in Lebanon and Gaza. During the Gaza war in 2014, this coalition was still able to mobilize more than 100,000 people.
The paper analyzes images of Palestine and Israel expressed by Muslim organizations when criticizing the Intifada as well as the wars in Gaza: How do Muslim organizations explain their concern with Palestinians and to what extent do they compare their own suffering with Palestinian suffering? How is the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict narrated, how are Palestinians portrayed and are there distinctions made between Israelis, Zionists and Jews? And, what is their concept of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and how far are there references to/comparisons with the Holocaust? Of special interest will be in what way antisemitism expressed by Muslim differs from left-wing or anti-globalization movements.
I will also show that the Intifada has caused a rift between Jews and Muslims, not only in the Middle East but also in Europe where they represent two non-Christian minorities with a transnational identity in which Israel and Palestine play highly symbolic roles. (Show less)

In July 2014 Israel launched the military operation “Protective Edge” against Hamas in the Gaza strip which also caused death to many civilian Palestinians. In response, pro-Palestine demonstrations took place worldwide. As in other European countries the protests in France were organized by different leftist and pro-Palestinian organisations, moreover many individuals with Muslim and/or Maghreb background participated. Besides pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist slogans and slogans against the French government some explicitly anti-Semitic statements could be heard and several anti-Semitic incidents occurred (for instance kosher shops were damaged and Jewish persons attacked). Sporadically, banners with the emblems of Hamas and IS could be seen. The close link between radical Islamism and anti-Semitism became one more evident in January 2015 when the Jihadists assassinated twelve people in the editorial office of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo also killed four French Jews during a hostage-taking in a kosher supermarket in Paris. According to the French police, the assassin explained that he deliberately had targeted a Jewish shop and Jewish victims to “defend the oppressed Muslims in Palestine”.
Obviously, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict has an important impact on Europe as well: especially in France there has been a significant increase in anti-Semitic assaults since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000. In many cases, verbal insults and physical attacks against Jews or Jewish institutions emanate from young Muslims, mostly with North or Sub-Saharan African migration background. Living in so-called banlieues of big French cities—generally characterised by high unemployment, high crime rates and poverty—they are often themselves victims of racism and Islamophobia and seem to make, in return, “the Jews” a scapegoat of their difficult living conditions. Nevertheless, the precarious situation of many young Muslims is not wholly sufficient to explain the complex phenomenon. Rather there is, concerning the current state of research, absolutely no consensus on the different causes, motives and the dimension of anti-Semitism among Muslims in France.
On this basis, the paper aims to take a closer look at the pro-Gaza protests of 2014 and their aftermath, asking above all why some Muslims in France vehemently show solidarity and identify with the Palestinians as their “Muslim brothers and sisters”, accompanied sometimes by anti-Semitic views or anti-Semitic acts. This will also be analysed against the backdrop of a certain pro-Palestinian “tradition” in France rooting in the vehement anti-Zionism of the Radical Left in the 1960s and 1970s and promoted nowadays by very different actors and political groups, ranging from leftist activists to Islamists. In return, the question arises how French policies and Jewish representatives reacted to the recent protests and incidents, and finally, how social tensions in contemporary France become evident through the controversial discourse on the Middle East Conflict. (Show less)

During the 1960s, Turkish “guest workers” arrived in Austria. Today, the Turkish community with about 260.000 members is the largest Muslim community in Austria. Though a high percentage of the children and grandchildren of the “guest workers” were born or raised in Austria and most of them are Austrian citizens, many still have a strong Turkish identity with close ties to Turkey. It is interesting that - compared to Muslims with Arab background – the Turkish community has for a long time hardly been engaged in political matters.
This changed in 2010 when “Austrian Turks” took part in debates about the Gaza-conflict. Turkish organizations were able to mobilize thousands of protesters against the blockade in Gaza. For the first time, numerous Turkish flags could be seen during demonstrations in Austrian cities. At some of these demonstrations anti-Semitic statements were also documented.
My paper will analyze the engagement of Austrian Muslims in the debate about the conflict in Gaza. Firstly, I will examine the motives of Austrian Muslims and especially “Austrian Turks” for their identification with “Palestine” and their participation in pro-Gaza demonstrations. Thus, I will investigate the political and ideological background and the motives of those Turkish organizations that were most active in organizing the protests. I will further demonstrate that there is a link between the activities of Turkish organizations in Austria and the active part played by Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan in the Middle East conflict since 2009. Since Erdogan had already frequently instrumentalized antisemitism, I want to ask if and how antisemitism was transformed from Turkey into Austria and what Erdogan symbolizes for the Turkish community in Austria. (Show less)