Jean-Marie Le Pen and Israel

Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front and long-time leader of the French far right, died this Tuesday, January 7, 2025 in Garches (Hauts-de-Seine) at the age of 96.

His most controversial statements are widely known, and he has been indicted on several occasions, including inciting racism, hatred, and advocating Nazi war crimes. Its relations with the State of Israel have never made the headlines and are less obvious.

In a book, The Devil’s Testament – ​​The last secrets of Jean-Marie Le Penby Azzedine Ahmed-Chaouch, published in 2010, the far-right leader claimed that Israel had been at the “origin” of the scale of the controversy triggered by his comments in 1987 on the gas chambers, which he had described as a “detail” of the history of the Second World War.

“I read in a book on the Mossad that they talk about an organization which, in Israel, is responsible for orchestrating opinion campaigns in the world,” he said in an interview with the author of the book, on April 15, 2010.

“And I think that’s how it happened. Monday [au lendemain de ses déclarations]nothing happens, and then it goes wild. Yes, I think Israel is the origin, yes I think that’s where it comes from. Yes absolutely, and above all the global orchestration proves a network, and that seemed out of proportion to me,” added Jean-Marie Le Pen, according to the work.

According to AFP archives, the condemnations of these remarks had nevertheless begun on Monday September 14, 1987, the day after his intervention, and continued over the following days.

In 2014, he strongly condemned Israel in his “Logbook” during the Gaza War, or Operation “Protective Edge”, and took up another conspiracy theory.

“No one can remain indifferent to the real martyrdom suffered by the Palestinian population. There is something nonetheless that surprises me: what provokes these very violent reactions from Israel and its air force, bombings of which civilians are generally, as always, the first victims, is the sending of rockets. Hamas would send hundreds of rockets into Israel… What surprises me is that there are no deaths… And so there is a tremendous disproportion between the response and the damage caused. I also find it very surprising that Hamas continues to send missiles or rockets into wastelands… which have no effectiveness. So there is something that surprises me in this… which raises questions. So, who is really sending these rockets? I don’t know. In any case, it is a pretext which is used by Israel to crush, with ultra-modern means, a population which is practically defenseless and which we know is already living in terrible poverty. No, I believe that this problem will continue to poison international life and perhaps one day even lead to excesses of very violent conflicts. »

“No stranger to conspiratorial outbursts (see here, there and again here), Jean-Marie Le Pen had, in March 2013 (Journal de Bord n°311), denounced the ‘total disinformation’ of which the French were, according to him, victims regarding of the situation in Syria, affirming that the Elysée and the Quai d’Orsay were acting under the rule of the State of Israel”, commented the Conspiracy Watch site at the time.

He had already made similar remarks in 1997, in the frontist magazine French first : “The Palestinian people are suffering a real martyrdom, since the rights recognized to them by the UN on their own land are not respected. This is a country and a people living in terrible poverty. Even more terrible, I would be tempted to say, than that which overwhelms Iraq. In Iraq, there is a genocide perpetrated and led by the United States with the complicity of Europe; but at least they have preserved a government, institutions, and national homogeneity. They suffer and die… But at home. While the UN and the nations that make it up have proven incapable of imposing a just solution in the former Palestine. Personally, I have long recognized the right of Israelis to have a homeland, but this right cannot exist if it does not have as a corollary the right of Palestinians to have a free and sovereign homeland. »

He had supported the Palestinians on other occasions, notably in 2018 and in 2009, when he compared Gaza to a “concentration camp in which people are deprived of the means to defend themselves”. This pro-Palestinian line was thus that of the National Front when he led it.

In 2009, during an interview at a dinner held in Paris for the thirtieth anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, he also declared: “I am a friend, I have always shown it, and I am always on the side of free nations that do not accept the dictates of other countries, particularly on recent problems in the nuclear industry. I said that I believed that Iran had the same rights as any other country in the world, and that if there was a voice that was going to be hostile to nuclear weapons, it should start by disarming those who had often acquired it secretly and in total contravention of UN rules. »

During this interview, he added on the subject of Gaza: “I said that I was scandalized to see that, in the great silence of world opinion, and even of Arab and Muslim opinion, we were crushing this little country which was a real concentration camp where people could neither enter nor leave, and that a modern army with an air force, armored vehicles, etc., treated this country in a completely inhumane manner, and I found that scandalous. »

In 2022, in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Israel HayomJean-Marie Le Pen declared “that it was about [lui] the accusation of being anti-Semitic, that [ses] political opponents have invented.

“I challenge them to find a political statement I have made that is anti-Semitic. Just because I am right-wing and nationalist, I have been accused of being anti-Semitic. This is totally false. Nothing in my life shows or expresses anti-Semitism,” he assured.

In the interview, this time he expressed his “sympathy for the small nation [Israël] who fought for her survival and her existence, and who succeeded in seizing her ancestral land. I have always been friendly towards [Israël] rather than an adversary,” he said, adding that he “fought alongside Israeli soldiers in the Sinai War in 1956.” “I was among the French paratroopers who parachuted into the Suez Canal, the Israelis came behind us and took Sinai,” he explained.

He certainly knew something of the history of Israel: with his “Society for Studies and Public Relations”, a publishing company founded in 1963, specializing in “traditional” singing, particularly military singing, he had published content regarding the history of Israel. His catalog indeed included Israeli songs, in addition to the choirs of the Red Army and songs of the German army (Wehrmacht and Waffen SS).

His vinyl “History of Israel – Voices and Songs” thus told “the sonic history of the Jewish people and the rebirth of Israel illustrated by 50 songs and 70 authentic sound documents”. Jean-Marie Le Pen was then the historical commentator.

In the 1980s, Jean-Marie Le Pen also attempted a rapprochement with the Jewish community, going to New York in 1987 to meet members of the World Jewish Congress. That year, two FN deputies went to Israel to meet representatives of Hérout, ancestor of Likud. These efforts were quickly swept away by the controversy the same year over the gas chambers, a “detail” of the history of the Second World War according to the far-right leader.

In his Memoirs published in 2019, Jean-Marie Le Pen also exonerated himself from any anti-Semitism, writing, always with conspiratorial overtones: “Anti-Semitism guarantees the homogeneity of the Jewish group, the Zionists know it. The comedy of detail caused a surge in requests for alya in France. This should not have bothered Ariel Sharon. »

Faced with his criticisms and conspiracy and anti-Semitic theories, but also with his few rare demonstrations of sympathy towards Israel, a country that he never visited and which never wished to receive him (as with his daughter Marine), it is expected that the leaders in Jerusalem will not pay him any tribute.

Glenn Cloarec contributed to this article.