“It will be a dilemma for many French people,” introduced LCI journalist Darius Rochebin, to qualify the hypothetical duels between New Popular Front and RN deputies in the second round of the legislative elections, scheduled for July 7. In front of the journalist, this Saturday, June 15, a key figure in the French Jewish community, Serge Klarsfeld.
The historian and lawyer, who devoted his life to the memory of deported Jews and to the hunt for former Nazis, assures that he will not have for his part “no hesitation” if the case arises. “I will vote for the National Rally, asks the 88-year-old lawyer. Because the axis of my life is the defense of Jewish memory, the defense of persecuted Jews, the defense of Israel. And that I am confronted with an extreme left which is under the influence of La France insoumise with anti-Semitic overtones and violent anti-Zionism. »
A recent rapprochement with the RN
Serge Klarsfeld’s statement is part of the couple’s recent rapprochement “Nazi hunter” with the far-right party. In October 2022, Beate and Serge Klarsfeld received from the hands of Louis Aliot – then candidate for the presidency of the RN – the medal of honorary citizen of the city of Perpignan. Criticized for his action, the lawyer justified a few days later on France Inter that the mayor of Perpignan was not a “enemy of anti-Semitism”but that he continued to make the far right a political adversary.
This adversity gradually eroded: in May 2024, the couple was elevated to the dignity of the Grand Cross and Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor by Emmanuel Macron, in Berlin. On this occasion, the couple shared a very softened position towards the RN, believing that Marine Le Pen’s party had broken with the anti-Semitism of her father, and was “entered the circle of republican parties”.
Although Serge Klarsfeld assured his centrist vote in the first round on LCI, the uninhibited affirmation of “Nazi hunter”affirming that the RN had “moults”was praised by Marine Le Pen and Éric Ciotti.
Neither RN nor LFI
In the Jewish community, it triggered strong reactions, revealing its political tensions since the dissolution of the assembly on June 9. “He’s falling into a trap!” “, Samuel Lejoyeux reacted Monday June 17 on France Info. In the statement by the eminent lawyer, the president of the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF) first sees “the immense distress in which the Jews find themselves today in the context of these legislative elections”, torn between “existential danger” what does the RN represent and “the left which allies itself with the anti-Semites of La France Insoumise”.
If Samuel Lejoyeux qualifies Serge Klarsfeld’s statement as “moral fault”he does not, however, avoid the question of the possible duel between the RN and the New Popular Front. “We are faced with two blocs which, ultimately, endanger the serenity of the Jews,” he concludes.
The president of the UEJF is not the only one to join the narrow corridor “neither RN, nor LFI”. With the announcement of the alliance of left-wing parties, including La France Insoumise, in one “new Popular Front”Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif), denounced Tuesday June 11 a “infamous agreement”. Accusing, among others, LFI of having “hatred of Jews is his electoral business”.
However, that same day, Yonathan Arfi also condemned Eric Ciotti’s declared alliance with the RN. In the name of Crif, he called on X the leaders of the Les Républicains party to “firmly reject any electoral agreement with the RN”. “Such an alliance would be a betrayal of the fundamental values of the Republican right! An unworthy and dangerous choice,” he castigated.
In the same way, appreciated and publicized rabbinical figures, such as Delphine Horvilleur and Haïm Korsia, chief rabbi of France, firmly hold the bar between two waters. On X, as in her studies, the rabbi of the liberal movement Delphine Horvilleur scrutinizes “the peril on the left” and denounces in the same breath” The extremes “while Haïm Korsia recalled, on the LCI set, that the application of the RN program involved the ban on the importation of meat from ritual slaughter and the wearing of religious symbols in public spaces, such as than the Kippah. “I think that any system of rejecting anyone is contrary to the spirit, to the spirit of the Republic,” he asserted. Furthermore, on the occasion of the European elections, the Jewish Consistory of France called for rejecting the vote of the extremes. But then there was only one trick.
