Samuel Laster, founder of the website Die Jüdische, once described Austrian Jewish voters as a phantomschmerz, the pain that comes with the sensation that a limb, once amputated, still remains attached.
His point was that Austrian Jewish voters are felt but not seen. Austrian political parties across the spectrum, for both historical and contemporary reasons, care about Jewish voters in a way that far exceeds their ability to influence an election’s outcome.
This Sunday, when Austria holds its second parliamentary elections in under three years, Austrian Jews will cast just a few thousand ballots within a far larger pool of almost 6.5 million eligible voters.
Yet in the middle of a busy campaign, either the leader or a senior candidate from every major political party appeared at a husting specifically for Jewish voters.
Every party, that is, except one — the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ).
Bini Guttmann, the incoming president of the European Union of Jewish Students, clarified that a party he defined as “structurally antisemitic” could not be invited to a Jewish community event.
The community’s main representative body, the IKG, boycotted the FPÖ’s ministers and MPs during their time in government as the junior partner to Sebastian Kurz’s People’s Party from December 2017 to May this year.
The government broke apart in the spring after far-right leader Heinz-Christian Strache was caught in a sting offering future state contracts to a woman he believed to be the niece of a Russian oligarch — in return for her financial support.
The reverberations from this scandal have been felt throughout the campaign, one dominated by a single question: who will govern with whom — more specifically, will Mr Kurz resume his partnership with the FPÖ under its new leader, former presidential candidate Norbert Hofer?
And as the country goes, so goes the Jewish community.
“In the name of young Jews,” Mr Guttmann appealed to the candidates, “do not enter into a coalition with the FPÖ.” It dominated the hustings: every party bar the People’s Party ruled out governing with them.
The audience — who represented the active and engaged core of the Jewish community — and their questions showed how, for Jewish voters, the FPÖ is viewed not only as a threat to democracy but a danger to communal life.
Attendees were very concerned, for example, about the influence of right-wing extremists in and over the country’s police force and security services.
While the existence of Jewish FPÖ voters is an open secret, the fact remains that the vast majority of Jewish voters continue to shun it.
Of course, this is far from the only topic on Jewish voters’ minds. The threats posed by Iran and Hezbollah to Israel’s security, the Israel-boycott movement BDS, and whether Austria would move its embassy to Jerusalem were all topics raised.
The size of the Austrian Jewish community means that it is impossible to study the intentions or habits of Jewish voters using standard opinion polling. The IKG does not endorse any one party; it merely recommends who not to vote for.
It seems likely that a majority of Jewish voters will again stump for the Social Democrats, as Mr Laster said they did in October 2017.
The party’s bond with Austrian Jews is a longstanding one and its leader Pamela Rendi-Wagner was by far the most popular candidate at the husting. She has a pre-existing relationship with the community: her husband, Michael Rendi, comes from a prominent Jewish family and was formerly Austria’s ambassador to Israel. Ms Rendi-Wagner lived in Tel Aviv during that time and lectured at the city’s university.
Although Martin Engelberg, a prominent figure in Jewish communal politics in recent years, is returning as a People’s Party candidate this year, neither his role nor the attention Mr Kurz has paid to Israel, Holocaust, or Jewish-related issues seems to have moved the needle.
Still, the election on September 29 remains Mr Kurz’s to lose. Since the government’s self-destruction in May, his People’s Party has been far ahead in the polls. The most recent figures indicate Mr Kurz will capture 33-35 per cent of the vote. Behind him are the Social Democrats on 22 per cent and the FPÖ hovering between 19 and 21.
Not only, then, is the election Mr Kurz’s for the taking, but he will have the power and discretion to choose whichever coalition partner he wishes.
In spite of talk of backdoor negotiations between bigwigs in the People’s Party and Social Democrats, a likely outcome remains the one Austrian Jewish voters would wish the least: another union of right and far-right, with the FPÖ once more walking the corridors of power.
