"Mélenchon is a person who is a threat against the Jews," said Yonathan Arfi, the chairman of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (Crif) in a interview with The Jerusalem Post earlier this week.
The French Jews’ main fear so far is that as the leader of the New Popular Front, a leftwing coalition that won a plurality of seats in the new National Assembly on July 7, he will be asked to form the next cabinet or at least to support it.
Which is why so many French Jews are now thinking seriously about moving to Israel.
Right before the general election’s second round, Arfi joined Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia and two other communal leaders to warn French Jews against voting for France Unbowed or alternatively for the right-wing National Rally, the party that replaced the National Front more than a decade ago and whose leader is Marine Le Pen, Jean-Marie’s daughter.
However, many French Jews, including former Crif chairman Richard Prasquier or Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, the famous Nazi-hunters, don’t subscribe to such a parallel. They point to the National Rally’s transformation under Marine Le Pen into a law-abiding, democratic conservative party, that has repudiated antisemitism thoroughly (and expelled Jean-Marie in the process).
Moreover, the National Rally, who garnered 10.1 million votes on July 7, is currently the most pro-Israel party in France.
Even more awkwardly, discarding both Mélenchon and the younger Le Pen would mean voting and supporting President Emmanuel Macron. But French Jews wonder whether he is really a friend.
He shocked them last autumn, when he declined, unlike almost everybody in his cabinet, to take part in a march against anti-semitism. He shocked them again, one month ago, when he banned 74 Israeli firms from EuroSatory, France’s World Armament Fair. A move seen as BDS’ biggest victory so far in a democratic country.
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