Why Le Pen's victory could give Israel more ammunition against Palestinians

An Israeli minister in Netanyahu’s far-right government has hailed the political victory of the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen after her National Rally party emerged as the clear winner in this week's French legislative elections.

Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli said that Le Pen's potential election to the presidency – which is not currently being even considered – would be excellent for Israel because of her strong stance against ''anti-Semitism''.

“It would be great for Israel if Marine Le Pen became president of France. In my opinion, it would be good for the State of Israel,” Chikli gushed. Chikli may, however, mean something quite different from what he actually said. His fulsome praise of Le Pen may not be because of her supposed pro-Zionist stance, as much as for her anti-Muslim attitude–which he, of course, shares.

The National Rally in France won one-third of the votes in last week's elections, making it the party with the largest legislative representation in France.

Its influence could still be reduced if other parties—from the centre-right to the far left—decide to unite en masse against their far-right opponents in the second-round vote on July 7.

This then might permit them to select a candidate to become France’s next prime minister, replacing Gabriel Attal, who is of Tunisian Jewish descent.

A lot can still happen between now and Sunday, and it is not yet clear what type of government ultimately will emerge.

A possible scenario, but by no means the only one, is that Le Pen's party will manage to form some sort of coalition.

Rise of the far-right

Le Pen took over the National Front in 2022 from her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, a hugely controversial figure in French politics.

She has attempted to moderate the image of the far-right in France by renaming it the ‘Rassemblement National’ and by eradicating its anti-Semitic discourse–at least on the surface of things.

Like many far-right and populist parties in Europe, France’s National Rally takes a fanatically pro-Israel line.

It shares with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an obsessive loathing for Muslims and holds a trenchant stance against immigrants from Muslim-majority countries. It accuses this small minority of being responsible for the so-called ‘Islamisation’ of France.

Jean-Marie Le Pen's party was long seen by French Jewry and by Israel as a grave threat since its discourse was rooted in anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

The younger Le Pen purged her father, other anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers from the party, trying for years to distance it from its unsavoury past so as to win favour with Jewish communities and Israel.

This was because it would give the party–once considered utterly untouchable–a certain degree of legitimacy.

If Le Pen's party does manage to form a government, Israel’s most extremist government, led by Netanyahu, will find itself working alongside a soulmate.

For right-wing French Zionists and Israelis, the New Popular Front - an alliance of the centre-left Socialist Party and the far-left France Insoumise party (which came in at second place) – poses another challenge altogether.

Much of that alliance, including La France Insoumise’s leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon – who is vehemently anti-Netanyahu but suspiciously and staunchly in support of Syrian regime leader Bashar al Assad – has embraced protests against Israel in recent months.

Many Ashkenazi Jews in Israel who retained the right to vote in France did not imagine that they would one day vote for the far-right National Rally. They might do so now because the French far-left strikes them as being unapologetically anti-Semitic in recent times.

While many Jewish organisations have called on French Jews to vote for Macron's centrist party, which has supported Israel and had, until recently, a Jewish prime minister and a Jewish minister of foreign affairs, several prominent Jewish voices in the country openly support the National Rally.

They consider Le Pen’s party as being the only way to oppose the so-called rising tide of Muslims and the radical Left’s anti-Semitism.

Right-wing parties continue to rise in polls across Europe. This follows what popularly is perceived as unfettered immigration by Muslims, as well as openly pro-Palestine and anti-Israel protests in many countries sparked by Israel’s genocidal massacres in Gaza.

As left-wing parties in the West turn against it, Israel apparently is reconsidering its once-strict policy of boycotting far-right parties.

What next?

The next French presidential election is not scheduled until 2027, but these early legislative elections, held after Macron's unexpected dissolution of the National Assembly, saw the National Rally lead in the first round.

Chikli's statement contrasts with the position of most leaders of the French Jewish community, who strongly oppose the National Rally, which they consider a real politick successor to Jean-Marie Le Pen's original National Front.

After all, few French Jews can forget that Marine Le Pen's father was found guilty of denying crimes against humanity after he called Hitler’s gas chambers a mere “detail”.

But unlike father, from the first weeks of the present conflict, Marine Le Pen expressed her strong support for Israel following Hamas’s attack on October 7.

Her new-fangled party also criticised the International Criminal Court, whose attorney general last month requested arrest warrants against Netanyahu, his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as against three Hamas leaders.

On June 24, immediately before the first round of legislative elections, France’s National Rally leader Jordan Bardella declared himself opposed to any recognition of a Palestinian state, arguing dishonestly that this, in fact, would mean recognising terrorism.

Had this ghastly Islamophobe read some history, he no doubt would have learnt that it was terrorism by the Irgun and Stern gangs that was the bedrock upon which the state of Israel was founded and went on to give the Israeli state several of its future prime ministers.