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rent -- affording entrance to the redeemed Israel of God. All those who are a set apart, holy priest-
hood through the atonement of Messiah, our "High Priest forever." (Hebrews 6:18)
-- Bikurei Tziyon, Jan/Feb 2000
First Fruits of Zion
GERMANY ALERT!
Extreme Right Soars in Austria Election
VIENNA (4 October 1999) -- Voters have made the extreme rightwing Freedom party (FPÖ) headed by Jörg
Haider the second largest party in Austria, a breakthrough of historic importance that could be ominous for
Europe. The FPÖ scored 27.7 percent of all votes cast, an increase of five percent over the last election and
enough for observers to describe Haider's success as "stunning." FPÖ parliamentarians will have enough strength
to force their participation in building a coalition to govern the country.
Chancellor Viktor Klima's Social Democratic Party lost 4.7 percent, pulling just 33.4 percent of the vote. Klima
called the result a "warning from the voters, and we must take this very seriously." Klima said he would not resign
as chancellor. The conservative Austrian People's Party of fell to third place with 26.9 percent of the vote.
Haider is notorious for having praised Adolf Hitler's employment policies in the past and for having called veter-
ans of the Nazi Waffen SS "men of character." The FPÖ laced its campaign with continued calls for a halt to the
influx of foreigners, who it blamed for crime and unemployment.
Until this historic success for the FPÖ, extreme rightwing parties in Europe had been confined to much narrower
voter acceptance. Germany's Republikaner and NPD, France's Front National and extremist parties elsewhere in
western Europe are expected to study Haider's winning formula and emulate the FPÖ campaign in coming
elections.
Commentators warned that the Haider win is an ominous sign for all of Europe. Israel's Justice Minister Yossi
Beilin was quoted as calling FPÖ's surge, "terrible and frightening" and adding, "the world has not learned from
history."
Jewish Cemetery, Memorial Attacked In Berlin
BERLIN (5 October 1999) -- Authorities are probing the large extreme rightwing scene and city officials have
issued statements of condemnation after attacks against a Jewish cemetery and a memorial to Holocaust victims
in Berlin. More than one hundred graves were kicked over and desecrated, some of them smeared with swastikas,
at the large Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weisensee, police said. On Monday, other swastikas were found daubed
upon the Putlitz bridge in Tiergarten, at a memorial to Berlin Jews who were deported by the Nazis.
As in previous cases of attacks against Jewish memorials in Germany's capital, police said there were "no traces"
of the attackers. No arrests have been made in the December 1998 dynamite blast at a memorial to former
Berlin Jewish leader Heinz Galinski. Those who desecrated Galinski's grave three months earlier have similarly
not been brought to justice. Nor have there been arrests in attacks on Jewish cemeteries in the Berlin boroughs
of Prenzlauer Berg and another in Weisensee, though the cases date back to 1994 and 1997.
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