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Austrian Banking Giant Embroiled in Controversy Over Anti-Israel Group’s Account

by TheTower.org Staff |

Erste Group bank, a Vienna-based European banking giant, has become embroiled in controversy over services it is providing to the Austrian branch of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign.

“The bank should tell BDS Austria to take its business elsewhere,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Jerusalem Post. Cooper added that hosting an account linked to BDS could give Erste Group “a black eye because of anti-Semitism.”

The BDS campaign seeks to stigmatize and isolate Israel until it accedes to a number of Palestinian demands, ostensibly in the interest of human rights. Critics of the campaign have accused it of being discriminatory in tone and intention, and pointed out that many of its leaders, including BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti, have publicly and explicitly affirmed that they seek Israel’s destruction.

Raimund Fastenbauer, General Secretary of Vienna’s Jewish community, agreed that Erste Group should close the account. He also repeated sentiments expressed by the community’s president, Oskar Deutsch, who described BDS as anti-Semitic.

Two spokespeople for Erste Group said that they could not discuss specific customers due to confidentiality standards, but that the bank would deal with legal issues that affect any of its accounts in an appropriate manner.

Erste Group’s American headquarters are located in New York, where anti-BDS legislation overwhelmingly passed the state senate in January. The measure prohibits the state from doing business with companies that boycott Israel or other American allies, and if approved could impact Erste Group.

The Post reported in February that a German bank, a subsidiary of the French giant BNP Paribas, came under legal pressure to close the account of Germany’s BDS campaign since it put the bank in violation of French law. A few weeks later the German BDS campaign confirmed that its account had been closed. France’s high court last year ruled that BDS was an illegal form of hate speech.

[Photo: ErsteGoupBankAG / YouTube ]

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