Leading Austrian candidate accused of lying about Israel terror incident
Far-right Freedom Party's Norbert Hofer claims he was only 10 meters away when a heavily armed female attacker was gunned down on Temple Mount; Israel Police denied claims.
The Austrian Freedom Party's Norbert Hofer, who is competing for the country's presidency in a vote held on Sunday, has been accused of lying twice about his visit to Israel two years ago.
Hofer has repeatedly claimed that during his July 2014 visit to the Holy Land, he came upon the scene of a terror attack on the Temple Mount and witnessed a heavily-armed female Palestinian attacker being gunned down.
He told the Die Presse newspaper that he had been only 10 meters away from the woman, who he said had been carrying grenades and a machine gun.
But during the last electoral debate on Thursday night on Austrian state television, he was confronted with a different version of events, supported by Israeli media reports, which posited that the so-called “terrorist” was, in fact, an unarmed Israeli woman who was lightly injured from police gun shots during a demonstration and Israeli reports of the incident made no mention of her having carried grenades or machine guns.
The debate's moderator showed a video of an Israeli police spokesman denying the incident had taken place, but Hofer merely dismissed the video as smear and slammed the channel that hosted the debate.
Over the past few days, Hofer, who leads in the polls, also made headlines when, during a recent interview on Austrian television, he was accused of having lied about meeting with the deputy speaker of the Knesset in Jerusalem, despite the fact his extreme right-wing party is boycotting Israel.
Throughout the election campaign, Austria's Freedom Party has been working to dispel accusations of anti-Semitism among its ranks, leading to the close scrutiny of Hofer's claims.
