Why I Don't Think French Jews Should Trust Marine Le Pen & The National Rally

Yesterday, Marine Le Pen's National Rally won the first round of French legislative elections.

Despite its long history of anti-Semitism, National Rally gained significant support from Jewish voters alienated by the indifference of French President's Emmanuel Macron's centrist Renaissance Party and repelled by the even more overt anti-Semitism of the far-left New Popular Front which has consistently refused to condemn Hamas attack against Israel while praising Hamas as a resistance movement.

Although Le Pen has been courting Jewish voters for years and has received the support of Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, I do not trust Le Pen and the National Rally.

Le Pen has long demanded that Jews not be permitted to wear yarmulkes in public and has denied Vichy France bears any responsibility for rounding up Jews who were sent to Nazi death camps, a fact that makes Klarsfeld's support all the more shocking. How does Klarsfeld ignore the Vel d'Hiv Roundup?

This isn't to say the far left isn't a more clear and present danger to French Jews while Macron talks a good game on anti-Semitism but is short on action. But so long as the National Rally, the National Front or whatever it likes to call itself tells Jews they must hide their identity while denying France's role in the Holocaust is unworthy of the trust of French Jews.

Meanwhile, regardless of the outcome of the second round of French legislative elections later this month, the end result is French Jews will continue their exodus to Israel despite the war with Hamas and ongoing tensions with Hezbollah. Yet it perhaps fitting considering it was French anti-Semitism arising from the Dreyfus Affair which sparked the modern Zionist movement in the first place.