A Divided Republic: France's election fallout and Israel

Israel polarises Europe. As of July 7, it has inevitably polarised France. While the leftist parliament faction sympathises with Palestine on the one side, the far-right supports Israel on the other side.

In the middle of this tension, which has sparked violence in the streets, President Emmanuel Macron is sitting on a bed of nails. For Israel, the New Popular Front's election victory is undeniably not good news.

The leftist coalition's chief and former presidential candidate Jean Luc Melenchon has described Israel's war on Gaza as a "genocide" and called for cutting arms trade with Israel to force Tel Aviv into a ceasefire.

Perhaps a National Rally victory, in which the parliamentary majority was led by a young firebrand pro-Israeli puppet chief of the party, with his strings pulled by an old hand lioness, would have been great for Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government.

Yet, considering the profound transformation that the French political landscape had in recent years, especially within the far-right, Israel will continue to cast fly rods for fishing in the seas of its former Cold War ally.

From anti-Semitism to supporting Israel

While the Holocaust seems to be losing its societal legitimacy to tolerate Israeli crimes, and its narrative no longer resonates as strongly as it once did in Europe, a significant shift is taking place within the far-right political elites.

Along with their anti-Muslim sentiment, and xenophobic and anti-immigration rhetoric, many far-right groups are now staunch supporters of Israel, breaking from their traditionally anti-Semitic views.

Marine Le Pen's words from May 29 about her father exemplify this shift: "Relations between Jean-Marie Le Pen and the Jewish community have been extremely difficult," and he "has made this difficulty worse by multiplying provocations."

However, according to her, "the National Front has always been Zionist." The daughter who rejected her father's political inheritance added, "The National Front, historically, has always been for the creation of a Jewish state."

Jordan Bardella also recently commented on Armenia, Slovenia, Spain, Ireland, and Norway officially recognising Palestine, stating in a news conference, "I'm not saying that this should not remain a horizon, but recognising a Palestinian state as we speak would be recognising terrorism. It would be granting political legitimacy to an organisation that provides in its charter for the destruction of the State of Israel."

Le Pen and Bardella are aware of the political and demographic clout of the French Jews and thus made an effort to appear sympathetic to the Jewish population in order to legitimise themselves politically by rejecting the party's anti-Semitic legacy.

"The only political movement that is truly a shield to protect our compatriots of Jewish faith … is the National Rally. I have never wavered on this subject," Le Pen said.

But the far-right has failed to win overwhelming support from the Jewish population. According to polls, the RN is estimated to have received a maximum of around 20,000 votes among Jewish voters in the first round, slightly more than 10 percent of the Jewish electorate, although official records of religious affiliation are not kept in France due to its strict secularism.

Nevertheless, Israel is still content with the transformation of the party, and will continue to support the far-right in France against pro-Palestinian political factions.

Indeed, Israeli Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli praised Bardella and the party for their anti-Palestinian statements after the first round of the elections. Also in late June, Chikli shared a video of Bardella, and on July 2, he said in an interview with Reshet Bet Radio that it would be excellent for Israel if Le Pen were elected president of France – even though this election in France was only for the parliament and not for president. In the same interview, he also claimed that Netanyahu agreed with his position on the subject and also wished to see the far-right politician come to power in France.

Israel's hook on the diaspora

Following the elections, Tel Aviv will also increase efforts to woo the Jewish diaspora in France and convince the French Jews to make aliyah to Israel.

Israel's policy of keeping France and the Jewish diaspora under close scrutiny has been in place since the 2015 terrorist attacks, which claimed the lives of four French Jews. After this, Israeli PM Netanyahu called on French Jews to immigrate to Israel.

"To all the Jews of France, all the Jews of Europe, I would like to say that Israel is not just the place in whose direction you pray, the state of Israel is your home," he said in a televised statement, referring to the Jewish practice of facing Jerusalem during prayer.

French Jewish soldiers in Gaza

Indeed, Netanyahu's call seems to have been answered in the war on Gaza. At a time when Israel stands accused of war crimes in Gaza, many French Jews joined the Israeli army. Some of them openly called for emigration to Israel, while others openly shared their war crimes on their social media accounts.

Benjamin Shmouel Sisse is known as a soldier who took an active role in the attacks against civilians in Gaza. In addition to Sisse, who holds French citizenship, Ilan Choucroun also took part in the military offensive in Gaza, which sparked a furore among many in France. Indeed, French MP Thomas Portes stated that more than 4,000 French and French-Israeli citizens involved in war crimes in Gaza should be prosecuted.

This situation fuelled the debate that French citizens should be held accountable for war crimes. Portes called on the Minister of Justice to take action on this issue, stating that otherwise he would take the matter to the Paris Prosecutor's Office. Depending on the course of the war in the coming period, the judicial process of these French Jewish soldiers and even the question of their "dual allegiance" may come up for discussion.

When the Fifth Republic in France was established in 1958, provisional president Charles De Gaulle initiated an arms embargo on Israel and began supporting the Arab countries. This was a huge shift from the alliance in the 1956 Egypt-Israel War and cooperating with the construction of the nuclear reactor in Dimona, which has pushed Israel to prioritise relations with the United States.

A similar shift in a future far-right presidency in France, which is getting more likely as the recent elections demonstrated, will whet Israel's appetite to have its ally back in Europe soon.