As far right and hard left vie for votes, French Jews seek least antisemitic party
Despite attempts to win community over, Le Pen’s RN is seen as main danger to Jews by left-wing organizations, though rival’s anti-Israel leanings complicate choice for many
PARIS, France (AFP) — Left-leaning Jewish associations and individual voters in France are struggling to make a choice ahead of snap parliamentary polls, with the far-right expected to make massive gains and the hard left mired in allegations of antisemitism as they protest Israel’s war against Hamas.
For the Jewish collective Golem, “the far-right is the main danger threatening Jews and French society,” its spokesman Lorenzo Leschi told AFP.
But “there is obviously a big antisemitism problem at France Unbowed,” the hard-left outfit known by the acronym LFI whose ambivalent response to Hamas’s October 7 massacre in Israel left it temporarily shunned by other left parties, he added.
Three major blocs are competing for votes in the two-round ballot on June 30 and July 7: the far-right National Rally, or RN, of Marine Le Pen, French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist camp, and the left New Popular Front alliance, of which LFI is the largest member.
It was “a total shame” for France’s traditional left party of government, the much-weakened Socialist Party, to ally with LFI, which “makes hatred of Jews its electoral stock in trade,” charged the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, better known as CRIF.
Raphael Glucksmann, who led the Socialists to an unexpectedly strong result at the June 9 European elections, acknowledged to an anguished voter on the phone in show last week that the alliance places “a very difficult choice before you,” while insisting the far-right “threat” was “infinitely too great” to renounce working with LFI.
LFI itself has always strenuously denied allegations of antisemitism, and the left alliance program includes a condemnation of Hamas’s devastating onslaught and a plan to tackle Islamophobia and hatred of Jews.
‘Erasing history’
The hard left’s campaign for the June 9 European elections laid massive emphasis on stopping Israel’s campaign in Gaza, while its leader Jean-Luc Melenchon claimed that France today suffered only “vestigial” antisemitism.
Such claims angered many Jewish people in the face of a 300-percent year-on-year surge in antisemitic incidents in January-March in the wake of the October 7 massacre and Israel’s military operation in Gaza.
This week, two teenagers from a Paris suburb were charged with the rape and abuse of a 12-year-old Jewish girl, acts apparently motivated by antisemitism.
Melenchon — a leading candidate for prime minister should the left score a majority — posted on social media that he was “horrified” by the hate crime.
But the attack offered an opening for three-time presidential candidate Le Pen to blast the “stigmatization of Jews” by “the far-left.”
Le Pen’s party was co-founded by a former member of the Nazi paramilitary Waffen-SS and long led by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who made repeated antisemitic remarks in public.
Since taking over, Marine Le Pen has tried to distance the party from its past, sidelining her father and renaming the outfit, and has attempted to win over potential Jewish voters, including those with vocal support for Israel.
Historian Serge Klarsfeld, who has spent decades researching the Holocaust in German-occupied France, stunned the community on Saturday by saying he would vote for the RN over the left alliance if forced to choose in the July 7 run-off.
“My life rotates around defending Jewish memory, defending persecuted Jews, defending Israel,” Klarsfeld said.
“I’m faced with a far-left that’s in the grip of LFI, which reeks of antisemitism and violent anti-Zionism,” he added — traits Klarsfeld believes the RN has “shed.”
“Serge Klarsfeld is… worsening confusion and outdoing everyone in erasing history, which is part of the RN’s ideological program,” philosopher Michele Cohen-Halimi, writer Francis Cohen, and actor Leopold von Verschuer wrote in a joint op-ed in daily Le Monde Thursday.
The RN itself and its conservative allies withdrew support for two candidates Wednesday who had made antisemitic posts on social networks.
‘Don’t have the choice’
The election is “totally weird,” comedian and activist against antisemitism Emmanuel Revah told AFP.
He is leaning toward voting for LFI because “the most important thing is beating the RN.”
“It’s very difficult, I’m rationalizing by telling myself I’d rather vote for a candidate or a party that’s just a little rather than completely antisemitic,” he added.
“We don’t have the choice, we’re voting for any candidate against the RN,” said Brigitte Stora, author of the book “Antisemitism: an intimate murder.”
Once the parliamentary polls are over, though, “we have to take Melenchon and his little lieutenants out of the game,” she added.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
