President Chaim Herzog said Sunday that Israel should react with caution, not anger, should Kurt Waldheim be elected President of Austria. But Deputy Foreign Minister Ronni Milo, a Likud MK, saw the election results affecting Israeli-Austrian relations and said he would consider the election of Waldheim, alleged to have a Nazi past, a “nightmare for every Jew and every Israeli.”
Both men spoke before the election results were announced in Vienna, giving Waldheim a decisive victory over his opponent, Kurt Steyrer. (See separate story.)
Herzog, on a tour of Galilee, said the government should decide the matter on the basis of what is “good for the people of Israel and the government of Israel.” He referred to the interests of Soviet Jews immigrating to Israel whose first stop after leaving the USSR is Vienna.
He said he believed in the maxim of Israel’s first Premier, David Ben-Gurion, that while the past must never be forgotten, it must never be allowed to influence the future.
‘A NIGHTMARE FOR EVERY JEW’
Milo, a member of Likud’s Herut wing, said he considered the election of Waldheim foremost a problem of the Jewish people which suffered the most from the Nazis. “The State of Israel, as the Jewish State, is concerned more than any other state in the world, and is therefore obliged to react more than other countries.”
He added, “If Waldheim is elected, it will be like a nightmare for every Jew and every Israeli because in 1986, 42 or 43 years after the Holocaust, to see the majority of voters in Austria supporting a man with a Nazi background like Kurt Waldheim, is for us an issue that we should react to as a Jewish State.”
Milo urged other countries to react similarly to Israel to that “tragic election.” He maintained that a Waldheim victory would demonstrate a “total lack of sensitivity on the part of Europeans toward the Holocaust.”
Labor MK Shevah Weiss said regardless of the outcome of the elections, Israel should continue the investigation of Waldheim. There were demonstrations against Waldheim outside the Austrian Embassy in Tel Aviv Sunday.
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