Even eight months after the start of the Israeli attack on Gaza, the repression against the solidarity movement with Palestine by the Austrian state and police is unceasing. Most recently, the police broke up protests because activists called for an “Intifada", and a lawyer was charged with incitement.
“On October 11 alone, there were over 310 fines,” says Martin Weinberger from the umbrella organization Palestine Solidarity Austria (PSOe). Several individuals and organizations have been uniting under this name to organize actions in solidarity with the Palestinian people for years.
Four days after the start of the current phase of fighting in Palestine, PSOe organized a rally on Stephansplatz in downtown Vienna. The protest was banned at short notice, but over a thousand people still gathered in the square.
Surprised by the size of the participants, the police were unable to break up the rally. A police cordon to surround the participants could not be closed, and the attempt failed. Only slowly did reinforcements arrive for the overwhelmed executive branch.
More than an hour later, the square was surrounded, and the protesters were taken away one by one. It took until midnight for the area to be cleared. People outside the police line at the time of the arrest were also arrested. A migrant youth standing beside the author shouted “Allahu Akbar". A few minutes later, three police officers ran up to him from the chain and took him away. Although the author intervened, the incident commander told him the boy “had shouted something forbidden.”
At the same time, as the police acted against peaceful Palestine activists, the entire federal government gathered in front of the Federal Chancellery on Ballhausplatz, less than a kilometer away, and remembered the Israeli victims of October 7. However, fewer people came to that memorial than the protest for Gaza, which the police banned at short notice.
In the following weeks, the authorities banned further rallies: “Since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza, we have been constantly protesting in Austria. So far, at least thirteen protests have been banned,” Marco Van Jura of the Initiative Palestine Solidarity IP9 tells Al Mayadeen.
The main organizer of the movement is Daniela Vill. She registered the October 11 demonstration with the authorities. She has been active in PSOe for years. She recently had to answer in court for an action in September 2023, i.e. before the fighting began on October 7. The case was quashed, and the charges were dropped. It is not the only charge Vill has so far collected due to her activism for Palestine. More charges have been added in the last few months. Merely a week ago, she received a charge for filming a protest by activists of the Jewish anti-Zionist organization Not In Our Name, who had protested by throwing red paint in front of the entrance of a research institute in a southern Viennese suburb. The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg had invited Israeli researchers to attend their premises.
“There are several hundred charges now,” says Weinberger. Mostly, they revolve around the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and its variants. It would question "Israel’s" right to exist and would therefore fall under the criminal offense of “incitement”, as the Graz public prosecutor’s office claims.
The legal procedure is based on a decree from the Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ) dated November 30, 2023, published only in mid-March 2024 and made available to Al Mayadeen. This decree with the reference number 2023-0,848,488 has the title “Decree of the Federal Ministry of Justice on the legal assessment of the slogan 'from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free' within the meaning of Section 282a Paragraph 2 StGB”.
It says that it would present the “legal opinion of the Federal Ministry (…) on the legal assessment of the public communication of the slogan (…)” First, the Israeli view of October 7 is repeated in the initial situation. A brief outline of the history and character of Hamas follows this.
In the third section, the BMJ sets out its account of “From the river….” It admits that the slogan was coined by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the 1960s and “used by various Palestinian groups as a call for the liberation of Palestine from Israel’s Occupation,” including for “peaceful efforts to promote Palestinian independence.” However, then only the slogan’s connection to Hamas is discussed in detail. The BMJ concludes that the demand negates the "state of Israel" and is, therefore, unlawful.
According to §282s StGB, using the slogan is a “speech offense”. Since the slogan can also “gross modo deny the State of Israel (…) the right to exist” and therefore means “a call for the destruction of the Israeli state,” “the public chanting of this slogan cannot be equated with the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians for independence,” said the BMJ in its decree. An announcement from the German Interior Ministry about Hamas was attached to the decree.
In addition to the weekly demonstrations throughout Austria, the movement tries to conduct other forms of action. One of the means is flash mobs and disruptive actions at public events: “We are trying to find new forms of protest to remind public opinion, society here, that a war and a massacre is taking place in Palestine,” said Mohamed Aborous from Arab Palestine Club (APC) to Al Mayadeen.
In addition to the political charges, hundreds of activists received administrative punishments. The Jewish anti-Zionists Not In Our Name protested in the Burgtheater against an event about "Israel" with Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg on January 21. There were also protests in parliament. For some activists, the fines add up to three hundred euros each – some already have five different penalties.
An example from Carinthia, a Southern region of Austria toward the borders of Slovenia and Italy, shows how far criminalization goes. Based on a statement of facts by the State Office for State Security and Combating Extremism, an investigation was initiated there because a person wore a scarf with the Al-Aqsa Mosque printed on it at a demonstration on February 17 in the city of Villach. Since it read, “Al-Quds (Jerusalem) is the capital of Palestine,” the Klagenfurt public prosecutor’s office claims that the images on the scarf would deny “Israel’s right to exist” by the wearer.
In their actions against the Palestine movement, the Austrian police, the BMJ, and the secret services rely on a “Scientific assessment of the slogan ‘From the River to the Sea’” by the so-called “Documentation Center for Political Islam” from October 25. Behind the name is a think tank fully named “Austrian Fund for the Documentation of Religiously Motivated Political Extremism (Documentation Center for Political Islam).” Under the guise of research, it has been spreading its racist and Islamophobic agenda for years.
It was appointed in 2020 by the conservative-green federal government to “academically document and research political Islam." She became known to the public by publishing her “Islam Map", which lists Muslim, Arab, and Iranian educational and religious institutions, cultural associations, and other organizations and people with their addresses. Personal information is visible on the map. In accompanying texts, the clubs and people active there are accused of anti-Semitism and brought close to "terrorism".
There is even a social room for the Palestinian community in Vienna’s 3rd district and the solidarity association Dar Al Janub on the map. As a result, several facilities became the target of right-wing extremist and Zionist attacks.
Recently, the police expanded their actions. At Easter, a Palestinian journalist’s house was raided in the Upper Austrian capital, Linz. He is the Director of the news platform “Gaza Now". This was preceded by close cooperation between the secret services of the USA, Great Britain, and Austria.
On Thursday, the police broke up a picket outside the Interior Ministry for using the word “Intifada” in speeches, a pensioner, Walter Hoeller, was arrested, and the well-known lawyer Astrid Wagner was charged with incitement for speaking at the peaceful rally.