A French court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by the right-wing politician Jean-Marie Le Pen against Jean Kahn, head of CRIF, the umbrella organization representing French Jewry.
Le Pen had sued Kahn for slander after Kahn said that a speech delivered by Le Pen last August constituted “incitement to racial hatred.”
Le Pen, whose anti-immigration National Front party garnered a dramatic 13 percent of the vote during nationwide parliamentary elections on Sunday, prompted Kahn’s remarks because of a speech he made denouncing the Maastricht Treaty for a unified Europe.
“It is curious that the ones in favor of erasing the borders in Europe are the same who want safe and recognized borders for Israel,” Le Pen said, speaking in his hometown of La Trinite Sur Mer in Brittany.
Pointing to “obscure forces and lobbies permanently warring against the nations,” Le Pen lashed out against “the new world order led by a cosmopolitan and international oligarchy.”
Le Pen concluded that Maastricht was part of an international plot.
Kahn criticized Le Pen for his use of anti-Semitic catch phrases. Kahn was backed in the slander suit by testimony from a leading French journalist and two well-known historians.
The witnesses said Le Pen was using an array of code words clearly understood by his followers, linking Israel and the Jews to the “cosmopolitan and international oligarchy” he denounced.
The Paris court, while stating that Kahn’s statement against Le Pen was indeed slanderous, determined that Kahn was pursuing a totally legitimate aim by “strongly warning the public against those inspiring obnoxious attitudes.”
The court then decided to dismiss the case.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
