French Jews Caught Between Extremes in Highly Polarized Election

by Elizabeth Pineau

PARIS (Reuters) – Five days before the first round of early legislative elections, Maury and Alain Fischler feel, as French Jews, trapped between two extremes, while the National Rally (RN) is leading the polls, ahead of a left-wing coalition which they consider to welcome anti-Semitic figures into its midst.

At the beginning of the month, President Emmanuel Macron called legislative elections, scheduled for June 30 and July 7, a thunderclap triggered shortly after the announcement of the results of the European elections giving a large victory to the RN in France.

The political situation deeply worries Maury and Alain Fischler, who are hostile to the extreme right and consider that the RN’s denunciation of anti-Semitism is nothing more than a ruse to gain respectability.

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“It’s not because they’ve spruced up the door, that they’ve put ten pretty faces in there with impeccable rhetoric that we can believe them,” says Alain Fischler, 61, a furniture designer, in the couple’s apartment in Paris.

Marine Le Pen has adopted a strategy of so-called “de-demonization” since she took the reins of the National Front (now RN) and then ousted her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, convicted of incitement to racial hatred in 1988 for having described the gas chambers as “a detail in the history of the Second World War”.

In particular, in November, she joined the hundred of thousands of people who marched in Paris to denounce the resurgence of anti-Semitic incidents since the resumption of the war between Hamas and Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip. The RN has adopted a resolutely pro-Israeli position.

This position has allowed the party to attract some French Jews, the most notable rallying being that of Serge Klarsfeld, 88, a lawyer and activist for the memory of the Holocaust, who declared that in the event of a second round between the RN and the left, he would vote for the RN, which he described as “pro-Jewish”.

However, many remain skeptical, like Alain Fischler, son of a deportee, who accuses the RN of courting Jews to mask its stigmatization of Muslims.

“ANTISEMITISM IS NOT RESIDUAL”

Maury and Alain Fischler are equally alarmed by the rise in power of the “New Popular Front”, a left-wing coalition hastily assembled to block the far right, and which is currently positioned in second place in the polls, in front of Emmanuel Macron’s party.

The alliance notably includes La France Insoumise (LFI), which is accused by its detractors of having crossed a line between defense of the Palestinian cause and anti-Semitism, accusations denied by members of the party.

“I have the impression of being between the plague and cholera,” laments Maury Fischler, a 61-year-old optician.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was already a source of tension in France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim communities, but the announcement of early elections has heightened political tensions.

Anti-Semitic incidents, which range from insults to vandalism and physical attacks, increased by 300% year-on-year during the first quarter of 2024, according to figures published by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. The number of incidents targeting Muslims has also increased, but less sharply.

At the beginning of the month, the leader of LFI, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, estimated in a blog note that anti-Semitism was “residual” in France. These comments, along with those of other members of his party, have, according to critics, stoked and normalized anti-Jewish hatred in the country.

Following the rape last week of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in Courbevoie, which was accompanied by anti-Semitic insults, protesters in Paris held up placards with slogans such as “Anti-Semitism is not residual” and “Have you become accustomed to anti-Semitism? Not us.”

For Sidney Azoulay, who came to demonstrate, the positions of certain parties are adding fuel to the fire.

“It’s a shame that in France, in the 21st century, Jews still make the headlines for these kinds of reasons.”

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has denied accusations of anti-Semitism, condemned the rape, as did the entire political class, including the RN. A police investigation is underway and three teenagers have been arrested.

Present at the demonstration, Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), called on voters to rally to the values ​​of the French Republic and to reject the two extremes.

“Our responsibility, for the moment, is first of all to ensure that neither rebellious France nor the National Rally comes to power.”

(Report by Elizabeth Pineau; with the contribution of Nicolas Coupe; written by Estelle Shirbon; French version Augustin Turpin, edited by Blandine Hénault)