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Join Telegram ChannelAn Israeli minister has endorsed Marine Le Pen for the French presidency, saying she would make an “excellent” leader for the country as her right-wing party seeks significant gains in the current election.
“It's great for Israel that she's president of France, with 10 exclamation points,” Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli said Tuesday, later indicating that his view could be shared by other members of the Israeli leadership.
“I think Netanyahu and I are of the same opinion,” he said when asked if the Israeli prime minister shared his views, according to the Times of Israel. The newspaper noted that it was still unclear what prompted Chikli to speak about Le Pen.
Marine Le Pen's National Rally has exceeded expectations in the European parliamentary elections, defeating French President Emmanuel Macron's centrist party and prompting him to call early elections because he said it would create tensions in the country if the electorate no longer believed in his party and its policies.
THE FRENCH RIGHT'S NATIONAL RALLY SEEKS TO PROFIT FROM ITS RECENT ELECTORAL WINNINGS
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli speaks at the 8th Annual Israeli American Council (IAC) National Summit on January 19, 2023, in Austin, Texas. (Shahar Azran/Getty Images)
The bet has so far paid off for the National Rally, which has continued to obtain good results in national elections, as well as in European elections.
Marine Le Pen has run unsuccessfully for president three times – in 2012, 2017 and 2022 – each time improving her standing and vote share over the course of this decade. In her last campaign, she won 41.5% of the vote against Macron.
Some speculate that the cultural issues at the heart of the election will allow the National Rally—and perhaps, in the 2027 presidential election, Marine Le Pen—to take control of the country. Immigration has proven to be a major issue for right-wing parties across Europe, as has their resistance to recent anti-Semitic protests and attacks.
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Marine Le Pen, leader of the French far-right National Rally (RN) party and a member of parliament, speaks to the press at the party headquarters after the first results of the second round of the French regional elections in Nanterre, June 27, 2021. (Geoffroy van der Hasselt/AFP via Getty Images)
Serge Klarsfeld, a famous Nazi hunter, announced last week that he would support the National Rally, telling French media outlet LCI that if it came to choosing between “an anti-Semitic party and a pro-Jewish party, I would vote for a pro-Jewish party,” referring to the National Rally, according to Le Monde.
Anti-Semitism has taken center stage in the election campaign after the alleged gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl, which many have called a hate crime. Two teenagers arrested in a Paris suburb have been charged with the crime, with prosecutors saying the rape was religiously motivated, ABC News reported.
Rabbi Moshe Sebbag of the Grand Synagogue of Paris said the elections showed him that French Jews had “no future” in France, telling the Jerusalem Post that he urged “all young people to go to Israel or a safer country.”
Macron on edge as France's National Rally gains momentum in first round of elections
Nazi hunters Serge Klarsfeld, left, and Beate Klarsfeld arrive to attend a national tribute at the Pantheon to late Holocaust survivor Simone Veil and her late husband, Antoine Veil, in Paris on July 1, 2018. (Ludovic Marin/Photo of the swimming pool via AP)
Sebbeg argued that while the far-right National Rally expressed support for defending Israel against Hamas after the October 7 attack, the party's roots come from a place of anti-Semitism that continues to trouble it.
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Jean-Marie Le Pen has been repeatedly convicted of anti-Semitic hate speech and has made statements downplaying the Holocaust, according to The Guardian, prompting Marine Le Pen to distance herself and the party from its founder – her father.
“Many Ashkenazi Jewish families who have been here since before World War II would not have thought of voting for the National Rally, but the left has been anti-Semitic lately,” Sebbag said. “The Jews are in the middle because they don’t know who hates them more.”