(https://www.oe24.at/oesterreich/chronik/jetzt-offener-gewaltaufruf-gegen-israel-bei-demo-in-wien/572393412, see also the screenshot below) Under the lurid title “Now open call for violence against Israel at demo in Vienna,” the newspaper writes in connection with a rally in solidarity with Palestine on 14 October:
“Now a flyer is causing outrage: activists from the group ‘Revolutionary-Communist International Tendency (RCIT)’ distributed a leaflet at the demonstration that calls for violence against the state of Israel. Under point 6 it states: ‘The RCIT reiterates that as long as the Zionist state exists, the Palestinians will continue suffering from state terrorism! This is why we stand for the socialist perspective of a democratic and red Palestine. We support the struggle for the destruction of the Zionist state and the right to return for all Palestinian refugees.’”
Furthermore, OE24 reports that Stefan Rastl, a Viennese council member for the neoliberal and strongly pro-Zionist party NEOS, intervened at the police to act against our comrades distributing our leaflet. The paper also reported that the leaflet had been forwarded to the Austrian secret service.
This hysterical attack on the RCIT reflects the current climate in Europe where governments and media take a stance of unlimited support for the Israeli Apartheid state in its war against the Palestinian people. Hence, they react with outrage if socialists and consistent supporters of the Palestinian cause take a strong stance against Zionist state. Activists of the Austrian section of the RCIT have a long record of solidarity work with the Palestinian people and with other Arab and Muslim migrant communities. We have been invited to address countless rallies and demonstrations on these issues. It is therefore not surprising that fanatic Zionists are now targeting our comrades.
The Austrian section of the RCIT has published a written statement in which it denounces this hysterical attack. Therein, we outline our program of struggle against the Zionist state and our alternative perspective of a secular and democratic state which should be a workers and poor peasant republic as part of a socialist federation of the Middle East. Such a state would be a single state in historic Palestine from the River to the Sea. It would allow all Palestinian refugees the right of return. Such a state, which would have a Palestinian majority, would guarantee full cultural and religious rights for the Jewish minority. Such a program is, in our view, the only guarantee for a peaceful coexistence of peoples with different religions and ethnicities.
We also stated that if fanatical representatives of the Israeli apartheid system want to defend their supremacy with violence, it is them – and not the oppressed Palestinian people – who bear full responsibility for such violence.
Such a program has been defended by the RCIT since many years, including by our Jewish comrades within the RCIT section in Israel / Occupied Palestine whose most well-known representative is our comrade Yossi Schwartz – a lifelong Jewish Anti-Zionist for six decades.
