First of all I was part of soli cafe for nearly two
years between just being a visitor and later spending one year of
volunteering and helping in the space, soli cafe supported me many times
and on many occasions and I tried my best to do the same. The space is a
community cafe shared with the kurdish community in Salzburg, with flags
of the kurdish state and the kurdish armed resistance inside, posters
about Marx and Rosa Luxemburg, quotes of Salvoj Zizek and a blue poster
with Spanish writing of a woman carrying a baby and a gun, the writings
says as it was translated to me one day (we have to fight for a world
where all worlds fits).
My testament is concerned of the events after October 7th, from my
personal discussions with members of collective it came out that the
majority are adopting the formal liberal western opinion about the
palastinian situation, which justifies and legitimates the Israeli
colonial state existence on the historic palastinian lands with total
denial of the bloody history of how it happened and the colonial aspect
of it, demanding the palastinian to just come to rationality and
modernity and make ‘peace’ with the situation, condemning all acts of
resistance as terrorist and all pro palastine movements and
mobilizations as pro terrorist anti semitic movements. Which was clear
in the collective response regarding all requests of having the space
for open descussions, movie screanings and book readings and any kind of
interaction with the topic, following the main stream Austrian stand of
condemning any movements that condemn Israel and question the existence
and legitimacy of the colonial state and the occupation. And while all
collectives, regardless of what they claim to be, have the right to
think as they want and engage with the topics the want. Yet I have to
express my disappointment of not only having a certain opinion but
shielding with their privilege as a white European community to just
choose to not engage with a topic like that. While claiming to be
political, standing for certain values and engaging with certain causes.
How can they claim that they stand for freedom of speach and be silent
about state aggression aganist pro-palastain movements, fighting class
injustice while turning a blind eye on colonial gains of selling weapons
to a colonial entity in the middle east, fighting for immigration rights
while standing silent when many European countries including Austria and
Germany openly threat the deportation of all anti zionist voices, again
having a different stand as a collective is more acceptable than having
a silence stand and individually adopting the same neo liberal
narrative. This letter is a very brief call for everyone to reflect on
themselves and their claim of adopting leftist stands and liberation
struggles while being silent when a real question of liberation comes to
sight.

At the same moment while it’s very hard to keep up and engage with every
conflict or disaster happening in the world, there is a clear
responsibility when it comes to this question on most central European
countries as the military colonialism of Palastinian lands was started,
facilitated by the british empire the ethnic cleansing of many
palastinian villages was done by the british army to replace them with
mainly European settlers, after the Arthur Balfour declaration of 1917
and the direct effect of the nazi holocaust and the mass immigration of
European Jews to Palastine and finally the unconditional support and
commitment to Israel by Germany and Austria and many other European
governments. Which can be seen in many things that I would like to
mention, for example sending arms and military units and equipments of
all sorts, financial funds, and offering public and legal coverage
through media and protection in the UN and the ICJ. So it’s really
awkward that so called leftists and politically involved people stand
silent and shield themselves from engaging with this conflict while
their taxes and governments are directly involved in genocide and
colonial occupation.