An Israeli family vacationing in Bad Hofgastein in Austria’s Salzburg region says the owner of a food stand refused to serve them because they are Jewish, while the business owner denies the allegations. Following the complaint, the district authority announced that it had opened administrative penal proceedings, and the Israeli Embassy in Vienna expressed “deep concern,” Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung reported.
Lidan H. and his family said staff at the stand refused to sell them food. “Because we are Jewish, he told us that explicitly,” H. told the newspaper. He said the family remained shaken even days after the incident. “It was shocking for us,” the family said.
According to the Austrian Press Agency, APA, H. told the newspaper that the stand owner said the family would not receive the food “also because of Gaza,” and that once he heard they were from Israel, he removed the hamburgers he had been preparing from the grill and threw them away.
The H family in Austria
(Photo: Kronen Zeitung)
H. filed a complaint with the district authority, the Bezirkshauptmannschaft, which announced that it would open administrative penal proceedings. The announcement does not constitute a finding of guilt.
The stand owner, meanwhile, strongly rejected the allegations. “It’s all nonsense,” he told the newspaper.
The paper noted that several negative reviews of the stand appear online, some containing allegations of antisemitism. The reviews are anonymous and have not been independently verified.
One user wrote: “I don’t know whether the food is good or not. Once they realized we were from Israel, they wouldn’t sell me anything.”
Another reviewer wrote that he was treated “with unimaginable rudeness and racism” after staff heard him speaking Hebrew, adding: “I have never experienced such hatred.”
Another post alleged that the business owner threatened a Jewish family and their children three years ago, adding: “We informed the local police.”
Eli Rosen, president of the Jewish community of Salzburg, Styria and Carinthia, responded to the report by calling for the allegations to be clarified quickly and urging greater responsibility in political discourse surrounding Israel, in light of other incidents in Austria and Germany.
In a statement, Rosen stressed that sweeping condemnations of Israel must not “become a gateway to hatred of Jews.”
The Israeli Embassy in Vienna said: “We are deeply concerned by reports that an Israeli family in Salzburg was denied food because of its identity. Discrimination against Israelis and Jews is unacceptable. If clarifications, warnings and statements do not help, practical measures must be taken.”
Ambassador David Roet wrote on X: “These incidents cannot be viewed in isolation from a climate in which antisemitism is becoming increasingly normalized, while false accusations against Israel are often left unanswered. Families and children bear the consequences.”
Meanwhile, after criticizing Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen earlier this month, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar spoke with Austrian Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger in an effort to ease tensions.
“Austria is a friend of Israel, and our relationship with Austria is important to us,” Sa’ar said. “I presented Israel’s positions on the issues currently on the agenda and spoke at length about the current wave of Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank, which recently claimed the life of Netanel Shakron, a father of six who was killed in front of his son, and seriously wounded Nerya Leiter, the son of Israel’s ambassador to the United States.
“Israel supported Austria’s candidacy for the UN Security Council, and we also discussed its upcoming term on this important body, which requires closer cooperation and regular exchanges of information and views,” he added.
Van der Bellen sharply criticized Israel, accused it of “war crimes” and said the Netanyahu government was moving through “dangerous territory” that would not serve it well in the long run.