A far-right Austrian politician used a visit to Israel's Holocaust museum this week to advance his platform of anti-Islamization.
The politician, Heinz Christian Strache, visited Jerusalem on Tuesday, after having been invited by Israel's right-wing Likud party.
Strache, 46, is a member of parliament in Austria and a lawmaker in Austria's anti-immigrant Freedom Party, which has garnered power recently on the back of fears of Muslim refugees coming to Europe.
Strache used his visit to the Jewish museum on Tuesday to urge a "common front" against Islamists, Reuters reported. Asked if seeing the Holocaust museum prompted any thoughts about the current refugee crisis and the displacement of Muslims, Strache said the two could not be compared, Reuters reported. "All of us in the western liberal Judeo Christian community with common values must stand up against this inhumanity," he said.
Strache and his xenophobic Freedom Party have long spoken out against Muslim rights in Europe. In 2006 he advocated against letting Muslim women wear the burka in public places. Last year he told a journalist, "We don't want an Islamization of Europe... We don't want our Christian-Western culture to perish," according to the New York Times.
Israel's official policy towards the Freedom Party is to boycott it, the Times Of Israel reported, but some politicians in Israel still maintain ties.
--HS
