Vienna - Vienna's Jewish community on Thursday called for the suspension of a local Islamic preacher who has called Israel a "beast" for its military actions in Gaza.

"If a rabbi talked like that in a house of the Jewish community, he would lose his job within a second," community chairman Ariel Muzicant told national broadcaster ORF.

Imam Adnan Ibrahim said in a sermon on January 9 that "Israel is the real beast, Israel is the criminal," according to a report by the newspaper Der Standard.

While Austrian political parties have called on the imam to retract his statements, Omar al-Rawi, an Islamic community representative, asked for understanding for Gaza-born Ibrahim, who has lost three relatives in the conflict there.

Al-Rawi suggested that mosques were being unfairly singled out by the media.

"Have journalists ever gone to a synagogue with translators and checked that?" he asked. (dpa)