Austria: Anti-Zionist to represent Holocaust survivors at parliament event moderated by antisemitic conspiracy theorist

Austria sure is serious about fighting antisemitism.

Via JTA:

Austria invited Hedy Epstein, a Jewish pro-Palestinian activist whom the Anti-Defamation League criticized for demonizing Israel, to represent Holocaust survivors at a panel discussion about women during World War II.

In invitations sent out Friday by the office of the president of the Austrian parliament, Epstein, who has likened Israel to Nazi Germany, was described as a peace and human rights activist. She is the only Jewish guest slated to speak at the event, scheduled to take place March 8.

The ADL in 2005 listed statements made by Epstein, who was born in Germany and spent most of World War II in Britain, first among examples of anti-Israel campus activism that “would meet both the United States government’s and [Natan] Sharansky’s definitions of anti-Semitism.” The ADL statement was in response to a lecture given by Epstein in 2004 at Stanford University, in which she compared the Nazi treatment of Jews to Israeli treatment of Palestinians.

read more

Via Jerusalem Post:

“The moderator of this event and the inventor of this project is Heather Wokusch, who is part of the 9-11 Truther movement,” said Pfeiffer, the Austrian Jewish journalist. The Truthers are wild conspiracy theorists who dispute the US government report that al-Qaida terrorists attacked America on 9/11.

 According to an article on the fringe AntiWar.com website, Wokusch wrote a 2004 article titled “Infamy: Pearl Harbor, 9/11 and the Coming Outrage.”

She wrote: “As a sidelight, there's an interesting connection between the Pentagon spy scandal and Sept. 11: allegations that Israeli intelligence may have known about the 9/11 attacks in advance and not told the United States.”

She asked in the article: “So where does all of this leave us as the third anniversary of 9/11 approaches? With more questions than answers. Whodunit? Should we blame Osama and the hijackers, Saudi funders, Israeli intelligence agents, the Bush administration or some combination? And when will we ever learn the truth?”

read more