Jews Sue Each Other Over Anti-Semitic Remarks

A Jewish senior member of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party said Monday he was suing the country’s Jewish community head, a tit-for-tat suit in the midst of a row over anti-Semitism.

Peter Sichrovsky’s suit against Ariel Muzicant intensifies a debate over anti-Semitism that has raged at home and abroad, sparked by far-right chief Joerg Haider’s recent attack on Muzicant, which has earned Haider a law suit. Sichrovsky, who says criticism of Jewish people is not tantamount to anti-Semitism, is himself the subject of a law suit from Muzicant for calling him an “idiot”. He has now launched a suit against Muzicant over comments made on his marriages.

The remarks demonstrate that “the current leadership of the Jewish community, which presents itself consistently as victimized and persecuted, places no value on concepts like tolerance and respect” said a statement from the office of Sichrovsky, the Freedom Party’s secretary general.

Muzicant’s comments were reported in an interview with the New York Times on March 25, in which the Jewish leader allegedly accused Sichrovsky of joining the Freedom Party “to make money to support his many children, as well as pay alimony to more than one ex-wife”.

The attack is “unprecedented in the history of the behaviour of a Jewish community president”, the statement added.

Haider, in reference to Muzicant’s business deals and debts, had jibed in late February that he couldn’t understand “how someone called Ariel could have so much dirt on his hands”, in a wordplay on a well-known soap powder. The remark has conjured up for some the traditional anti-Semitic portrayal of the “dirty Jew”, which was frequently invoked by the Nazis.