The RN, a dilemma for Israel and the Jewish community of France
The results of the first round of the French elections and the possibility that next week a government led by a far-right party, the National Rally, will be formed are causing confusion in Israel, which will have to decide how to respond to such an executive.
For the Israeli government, the challenge will be to gauge, on the one hand, the positions of the French far right, which, despite its anti-Semitic roots, is today favorable to Israel, and, on the other hand, the fears of the French Jewish community in the face of its ultranationalist rhetoric.
For decades, Israel refused to maintain official relations with the French far right, particularly when it was led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, an anti-Semitic politician who, when not denying the Holocaust, declared that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were merely“a detail of the story”.
From Anti-Semitism to the Defense of Israel
But, for a good decade, his daughter, Marine Le Penwho has since become the undisputed figurehead of the French nationalist right, is trying to convince the French Jewish community that she is not complicit in her father’s anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.
Israel has long viewed the Le Pen party with suspicion, although it has never officially boycotted it, unlike other European far-right parties, such as AfD in Germany.
An Israeli official calls Israel’s position “
