On the 25.01.2024 BDS Austria activists among several other groups joined a protest action organized by Freies Palästina Kollektiv Uni Wien and the Students of the Palestinian Cause Austria. It took place in front of the NIG Neues Institutsgebäude of the University of Vienna. A number of speeches were held and chants demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza and a free Palestine filled the busy streets.
In the beginning, there was a small group of zionists attempting to disturb the action. They were unsuccessful due to the big difference in numbers and fortitude.
When Hadi, a Palestinian refugee boy from Gaza held his speech and was telling the audience about the incomprehensible 82 family members he had lost in the ongoing Israeli genocide, the counter-protestors interrupted him with chants against antisemitism.
After they were dispersed by the police because their assembly wasn’t registered, a few individuals kept filming from the other side of the street. It turned out they were part of the student representative body (ÖH) at the university. Speakers from the Autonomous Feminist Referat – which was expelled by the same officials last November – informed the gathered and passing students where their ÖH money goes: into the harassment of pro-Palestine students and activists.
The focus of the speeches was primarily a material and economic one. The University of Vienna’s blatant silence on the ongoing genocide perpetrated by the Israeli criminals in Gaza as well as its cooperation with the occupation’s academic and cultural institutions, Austria’s complicity in arms trades and unceasing support for the atrocities committed against the Palestinian people.
Furthermore, plenty of historical references were put forward, pointing out the university’s leading role in the intellectual rationalization and dissemination of the eugenics and fascist ideology of the Nazis and its unwillingness to bring the deeply complicit leadership to justice afterwards. Rather, perpetrators were quickly reinstated in all fields after the Nazis’ defeat without bother.
De-Nazification was never properly carried out in Austria. “Never again” remains an empty PR slogan for the repressive state and its institutions to shield themselves from historical responsibility. Instead of de-nazification and reparations, Austria started supporting and investing in the European settler colonial project of Israel, which was theorized by Theodor Herzl, a Viennese journalist, raging imperialist and the so-called father of zionism.
As BDS Austria we salute the centrality of BDS among the students’ demands. PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, tells us to apply pressure in that way. It calls for the boycott and termination of cooperations between educational and cultural facilities and Israeli universities in occupied Palestine, serving as military hubs and normalization entities for students from abroad.
PACBI also sheds a light on so-called “fact finding missions” to Israel. We remember the trip in summer 2022 organized by the zionist student representatives of the ÖH which almost all factions and an alleged anti-racism initiative took part in. The fully-funded delegation even went to the border fence around Gaza. Note that Gaza was being bombed in the beginning of August 2022 which resulted in the killing of 50 Palestinians.
Freies Palästina Kollektiv Uni Wien and the Students of the Palestinian Cause Austria worded a number of general demands towards the University of Vienna which we as BDS Austria fully support:
⁃ the university must introduce a civil clause ensuring that research and teaching be used for civil purposes only, meaning that knowledge production must not be abused for or funded by military institutions, weapons manufacturers and war-waging entities,⁃ the cessation of the collaborations with the Austria Integration Ministry and the Documentation Center for Political Islam – two governmental bodies that serve as militarized security apparatuses against Muslims in Austria – and the immediate removal of the “Islam Map”,
the discontinuation of research and Erasmus cooperations with Israeli universities, in particular with the Hebrew University in occupied Jerusalem,
the halt of repressive measures such as banning clubs, cancelling lectures and intimidating the professorship and student body,
the reinstation of colleagues among the student representatives who were fired because of speaking out against the genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza
and finally, the University of Vienna must call on the Austrian authorities to end all relations with the fascist state of Israel
We lastly want to affirm the historical potential of student movements and academic efforts to apply pressure and bring about change. We call on every student, professor, tutor and staff member to join the global solidarity movement for Palestine. There is a lot to do in Austria’s repressive university structures and we must push forward collectively.
Apply BDS guidelines on your university campuses and in your departments, reject the normalization of the colonial zionist narrative in lectures, refuse to quote Israeli academic institutions and scholars and do not take part in/disrupt conferences platforming hasbara propaganda as scientific. Make your reasons known! Don’t be silent and get organized!
Yes yes BDS! Free free Palestine!
