She is Muslim, wears a hijab, is a secondary school teacher in the Favoriten district of Vienna and is running as the lead candidate for the small SÖZ party in Vienna’s local council elections: We are talking about Sali Attia, whose profile is depicted on the SÖZ (‘Social Austria of the Future’) election posters. Above it is the slogan: ‘The new Viennese mayor’. The subtitle reads: ‘5 racism-free years’. Attia already stood in the last National Council elections – not for SÖZ, however, but for the ‘Liste GAZA – Stimmen gegen den Völkermord’ (GAZA List – Voices against Genocide), which was founded in 2024. The anti-Zionist party received just 0.4 per cent of the vote in September.
‘Liste GAZA’ is obviously trying to get a foothold in Vienna City Hall with Attia – without standing directly in the election on 27 April. There appears to be a lively exchange between SÖZ and ‘Liste GAZA’, both of which specifically campaign for Islamic Austrians with a migration background.
Founded in 2019 by Hakan Gördü, a son of Turkish migrant workers, the SÖZ party has so far only competed in the federal capital, where it won 1.20 per cent of the vote in the 2020 election and managed to gain seats in six district councils.
For the National Council elections in September, SÖZ made an election recommendation for the ‘GAZA list’. ‘A list that does not ignore the bloody genocide in Gaza’, wrote the party, which is in favour of Islamic issues. It then called on people to vote for the ‘GAZA list’ for ‘every innocent person murdered in Palestine’. The bloody massacre of innocent Israeli civilians by the radical Islamist Hamas on October 7, 2023 is not mentioned in the election recommendation.
An enquiry by our website exxpress.at as to how exactly the cooperation between the two parties is regulated and what the party’s position is on Israel’s right to exist remained unanswered up to the time of publication of this article by SÖZ.
SÖZ is primarily in favour of Muslims. In the current election campaign, it is campaigning for an official, nationwide holiday at the end of Ramadan (Eid al-Fitr) and is calling for an annual, public Eid festival “in a central square, for example Town Hall Square” (exxpress reported). It is also in favour of Ramadan light chains on the streets of the Favoriten district of Vienna, as is already the case in Frankfurt and Munich, for example.
However, its press releases also often focus on criticism of Israel, Gaza and the Palestinians. On October 20, 2023, just a few weeks after the terrorist attack on Israel by the terrorist organisation Hamas, the party called for millions in funding ‘also for Muslims’. The background to this was the federal government’s decision to provide the Jewish Community in Austria with funding totalling 7 million euros annually. This is part of its national strategy against anti-Semitism. In the press release, SÖZ accuses the Israeli government of committing war crimes against Palestinians.
In February last year, the party criticised the suspension of aid payments to UNRWA, the UN Palestinian Relief and Works Agency, decided by the black-green federal government after allegations were made that UNRWA employees were involved in the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7.
The ‘GAZA List’ is even more radical in its criticism of Israel than SÖZ. In their election manifesto, they claim that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians and criticise the fact that Austrian parties represented in parliament have not spoken out against this. In addition, the Republic had violated its neutrality by flying the Israeli flag at the Federal Chancellery.
The fact that 1,182 people were killed and 250 taken hostage in the Gaza Strip during the cruel attack by the Palestinian Hamas on Israeli civilians is not mentioned at all in ‘Liste GAZA’. Nor does it mention Israel’s right to self-defence. Instead, it speaks of Israel’s ‘colonialism, occupation and apartheid’ as the ‘underlying cause of the conflict’. The party represents the radical left-wing narrative that an ‘apartheid regime’ prevails in Israel. In Israel, but also among ‘supporters of the Zionist idea worldwide’, ‘racism against Palestinians is on the agenda’, is another thesis in their election programme.
To say that the attack on October 7, 2023 was the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust is seen by ‘Liste GAZA’ as a ‘trivialisation of Nazi terror’.
Anti-Zionism, as represented by ‘Liste GAZA’ and SÖZ, is higher among people with Turkish and Arab roots, according to the Austrian parliament’s new anti-Semitism study. Only 39 per cent of the 1,080 people with Turkish and Arab roots ‘strongly agree’ and ‘somewhat agree’ with the statement ‘Hamas’ attack on Israel was a despicable act of terrorism’. By comparison, 72 per cent of the population as a whole ‘strongly agree’ and ‘somewhat agree’ with the statement.
In contrast, 40 per cent of the group with a migrant background ‘somewhat disagree’ and ‘strongly disagree’ with the statement. In the overall population, the figure is only 9 per cent.
In addition, ‘Liste Gaza’ sees itself as a bulwark against the alleged ‘anti-Islam course’ of Austrian politics that it describes. They are calling for the dissolution of the ‘Documentation Centre for Political Islam’, which was set up in 2020 by the then black-green government under Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP), and the ‘Islam Map’. This project by the University of Vienna provides an overview of Muslim institutions in Austria.
It is therefore not only domestic parties such as the SPÖ and FPÖ that are courting Austrians with an Islamic migration background. New parties are emerging that are explicitly committed to Muslim issues – which is not surprising, as the number of people of Muslim faith in Austria is increasing. At around a third (35 per cent), Muslims now make up the largest religious group at Viennese primary schools.
According to a 2017 study by the Vienna Institute of Demography, one in three Viennese could be Muslim by 2046.
It is therefore not far-fetched to claim that changing demographics could lead to Islamic parties such as SÖZ or ‘Liste GAZA’ gaining popularity in the future.
The ‘soft seige’ of Vienna.