Despite its well-documented history of anti-Semitism, Jews in France might vote for Marine Le Pen's National Rally party over increasingly anti-Israel left-wing parties, said Nazi-hunter and historian Serge Klarsfeld on French national television LCI channel this week.
Klarsefld was born on September 17, 1935, in Bucharest. In 1943, his father sacrificed himself to the Gestapo while he, his mother, and his sister hid in their Nice home. After being rounded up by the French Vichy police, Klarsfeld's father was later sent to Auschwitz, where he was believed to be murdered, according to the couple's website.
In the interview, Klarsfeld said that if the upcoming French parliamentary elections end in a decision between La France Insoumise (far left wing) or the National Rally party (right-wing), he would choose the latter.
"When there is an anti-Semitic party and a pro-Jewish party, I will vote for a pro-Jewish party," he said.
The National Rally party, led by controversial figure Marine Le Pen and current president Jordan Bardella, counts among its founding members a Nazi paramilitary solider, reported WSJ in a report this week. Given that Klarsfeld, 88, is a Holocaust survivor, many in France, including fellow Jews, have responded with shock.
Klarsfeld stated that the real threat to French Jews came from the left, not the right, and that he wouldn't hesitate to vote for Le Pen if the alternative was the leftist coalition, referred to as the New Popular Front.
"I would not hesitate; I would vote for the National Rally. The crux of my existence is the defense of Jewish memory, the defense of persecuted Jews, and the defense of Israel. Now, I am faced with the extreme left, who, under the influence of La France Insoumise, has antisemitic undertones and violent forms of anti-Zionism. The National Rally, however, has been transformed."
“The National Rally supports Jews, supports the state of Israel,” Klarsfeld continued.
Klarsfeld has met Le Pen on several occasions, including since the October 7 attack, most recently in February at his apartment in Paris.
Le Pen celebrated Klarsfeld’s comments in the broadcast, saying he was the “guardian of the memory of the Shoah.”
Klarsfeld's statements this week differ from previous statements made in an interview in Le Soir in 2015, in which he said that the National Front was antisemitic and declared: "Marine Le Pen would be the destruction of the memory of the Shoah. If she wins, I will leave."
In 2022, Klarsfeld and his wife signed a petition in Libération against Marine Le Pen, describing her as “the daughter of racism and anti-Semitism."
According to Le Monde, he once bought pages of press advertising in 2017 to call for Marine Le Pen to be blocked, with photos relating to concentration camps.
Does this reflect wider French views?
On June 10, Yonathan Arfi, head of Le Crif (Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions), posted on his X, formally known as Twitter, saying, "La France Insoumise has made hatred of Jews its electoral business: allying with LFI means dealing with anti-Semitism."
Que le PS puisse encore envisager une alliance avec LFI est une honte absolue.La France Insoumise a fait de la haine des Juifs son fonds de commerce électoral : s'allier avec LFI, c'est composer avec l'antisémitisme. Face au RN, il faut de la clarté : sur l'islamisme, la…
— Yonathan Arfi (@Yonathan_Arfi) June 10, 2024
Arfi also condemned the National Rally and asked other parties not to ally with them.
For a long time, French Jews avoided the National Rally due to antisemitic associations and messaging, reported WSJ this week. The founder of the party - Jean-Marie Le Pen - was condemned by the Nanterre civil court in 1987 for calling the Nazi gas chambers a "detail in the history of the Second World War" in an appearance on national television. Pierre Bousquet, another founder, was a member of the French division of the Waffen-SS.
However, Klarsfeld alleged in his interview that this is in the past. Some believe the National Rally has reached out to French Jews in recent years, particularly in the aftermath of October 7. In November 2023, Le Pen attended a march against anti-Semitism. The party's president, Jordan Bardella, has defended Israel. In an interview with Europe 1 on October 1 and 2, 2023, Bardella said, "What affects Israel today will affect France tomorrow."
On the other hand, Bardella, in an interview in 2024, denied that Jean-Marie Le Pen was antisemitic: “I don’t believe Jean-Marie Le Pen is an antisemite. Now, I obviously wouldn’t make the comments he made about the ‘detail’ because, for me, the horrors of the Holocaust aren’t a detail of history.”
In an interview with Le Monde on 22 June, Le Pen said, "The fact that hatred of Jews has become a major topic in the electoral campaign for the legislative elections shows the politics have lost their way." She called anti-Semitism "both a symptom of social and political crisis and a tragically destructive weapon."
French-Jewish opinion
The American Jewish publication Forward reported on a poll carried out by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP), which revealed that 92% of Jewish respondents blame the La France Insoumise for the rise of anti-Semitism in France. In contrast, only half that number blame the National Rally.
60% of French Jewish respondents claimed they would leave France if an LFI member became prime minister, while only 37% would leave if an NR minister won.
In the most recent electoral opinion poll on 21 June, IFOP found that 38% of French people want a victory for the National Rally. The National Rally has moved significantly ahead of Macron's party in European elections, and polls show the NR leading in the first round of elections on June 30.France's Jewish community is about 500,000-strong - the largest in Europe. There has been a significant increase in antisemitic incidents in France in the last few years. Last week, a 12-year-old Jewish girl in Paris reported she had been gang raped in what was alleged to be an antisemitic incident.
Since October 7, Israel's Ministry of Aliyah and Integration reported a 300% increase in applications from French Jews.
Olivier Costa, a research professor at Sciences Po, spoke to the Wall Street Journal, saying that the National Rally’s anti-Muslim rhetoric resonates with part of the conservative Jewish electorate.
While some Jews support Raphaël Glucksmann, who is of Jewish descent and fronts a socialist party, many Jews said they could not vote for him following his decision to ally with La France Insoumise.
“We have no trust in La France Insoumise,” affirmed Yonathan Arfi.
Le Figaro this week quoted the chief rabbi of Franc,e Haim Korsi, as saying that he didn't believe Marine Le Pen was acting in good faith but rather from a place of "rejection of Muslims and the Arab world."
Many French Jews still doubt the intentions of the National Rally, reported WSJ. Despite the pro-Jewish and pro-Israel rhetoric of the party’s leaders, Jews fear that many party members still harbor antisemitic views.
“It’s not good,” said Jonathan Behar, a 42-year-old entrepreneur, to the WSJ, "it's just less bad."
“I never would have imagined voting in favor of the National Rally to blockade against anti-Semitism,” the writer Alain Finkielkraut told French magazine Le Point this month. “The current situation is heartbreaking for the Jews of France.”