Le Pen’s Strong Showing Worries French Jewish Leaders

Leaders of French Jewry were dismayed by the strong showing of extremist-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in Sunday’s French election.

Le Pen, who has been known to make anti-Semitic statements and campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform, received 15 percent of the vote.

To everyone’s surprise, including his own, Lionel Jospin, the Socialist candidate for the French presidency, won Sunday’s elections with 23.3 percent of the vote.

As a result of his victory, Jospin will face Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac in the May 7 runoff elections to replace outgoing President Francois MItterrand.

Chirac, the conservative Gaullist Party candidate who was favored to win the first round, came in second, with 20.7 percent of the vote. His fellow conservative, Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, was ousted from the race after finishing third, with 18 percent of the vote.

Another right-wing nationalist, Philippe de Villiers of the Movement for France, received 5 percent of the vote.

Le Pen charged Sunday that French radio stations had attempted to undermine him on election day by “repeating every five minutes that the culprits in the Oklahoma City bombing were from the extreme right.

But after the results came in, Le Pen called his tally “a very great political success.”

Although Le Pen has claimed that he is not anti-Semitic, he has made frequent statements in the past denying that the Holocaust took place.

In 1991, an appeals court in Versailles ordered him to pay about $18,000 for slurring Holocaust victims.

As far back as 1968, a Paris criminal court found Le Pen guilty of having issued a recording of Nazi war songs and marches. The record also contained a commentary by Le Pen, who voiced his approval for Nazis accused of having committed war crimes.

Although he expressed dismay at Le Pen’s strong showing, Jean Kahn, president of CRIF, the umbrella body representing France’s secular Jewish organizations, said he did not believe that all those who voted for Le Pen were racists and anti-Semites.

“It was a vote of protest and of despair, protest against the bad economic situation, against the financial scandals in which many political leaders are involved,” Kahn said.

“After having protested, most of Le Pen’s voters will go back to more traditional parties.” he added.

“There is a rise of racist feelings here, or rather of xenophobia against immigrants,” most of which is directed at Muslims from North Africa, he said.

Kahn noted with some concern that if Le Pen had not had de Villiers as a challenger, he might have emerged second in the first round of elections.

“This must give us all a lot of food for thought,” said Kahn.