Le Pen: Macron’s anti-Israel shift comes at ‘worst possible time’

Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s right-wing National Rally, said on Monday that French President Emmanuel Macron’s increasingly hostile attitude to Israel came “precisely at the worst possible time.”

Her remarks, made during an interview with Israel’s i24 News, follow the decision by Israel’s government in February to lift its longstanding boycott of National Rally, a party established by a Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen’s father.

“I am very concerned about the distance that Emmanuel Macron is creating with Israel, if I may put it this way precisely at the worst possible time,” said Le Pen. “At a time when Israel is fighting a war against terrorism, when it needs the support of its friends,” she continued, adding that France had “traditionally” been friendly toward Israel.

Macron, a centrist who had had many Jewish voters and who initially had supported Israel’s war on Hamas, in recent months has turned against the Jewish state, imposing an arms embargo on it, declaring a plan to recognize a Palestinian state and calling to review the E.U.-Israel relationship.

Macron has also used harsh language against Israel, triggering an unusually discordant exchange with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Macron, who has previously accused Israel of “barbarism” in Gaza, last week called its blockade of the enclave “shameful” and urged the United States to rein in Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s office responded by saying that Macron had “again chosen to stand with a murderous Islamist terrorist organization and echo its despicable propaganda, accusing Israel of blood libels.”

“We remember well what happened to the Jews in France when they could not defend themselves. President Macron will not preach morality to us,” the statement said.

During World War II, France’s collaborationist authorities helped the Nazis murder tens of thousands of French Jews.

Members of Macron’s own party, too, have criticized him over his shift on Israel, including lawmaker Shannon Seban. She called Macron’s words on Israel “harmful” and “not the right choice.” She also criticized his demand that Israel stop its war against Hamas while the hostages are still held in Gaza by Hamas.

Recognizing a Palestinian state before Hamas is dismantled “risks portraying the group as legitimate defenders or even saviors of the Palestinian people, rather than acknowledging their role as a terrorist organization responsible for immense suffering on both sides,” she said.

Seban, who recently became the European Affairs advisor of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), rejected claims that Macron’s actions and inflammatory rhetoric on Israel are exacerbating France’s rising antisemitism problem.

“I think President Macron has been clear in denouncing antisemitism, and is probably the most credible actor against antisemitism in a society where the worst actors are the far-right National Rally Party and the far-left France Unbowed,” she told JNS.

Prominent French Jewish figures, including Raphaël Jerusalmy, a former military intelligence officer and pundit, have accused Macron of contributing to the rise in prevalence of antisemitic incidents. The total number of antisemitic acts recorded in France last year—1,570—has slightly decreased from the 1,676 reported the previous year, but the 2024 tally is still one of the highest on record.

Jerusalmy told i24 News on Monday that Macron had “stabbed the Jewish community in the back.”

Seban told JNS that despite Marine Le Pen’s pledges to reform her party, “it still has antisemites in its ranks.”

Since Le Pen in 2011 took over the party her father established, dozens of National Rally activists, including her father, have been kicked out of the party for antisemitic speech and Holocaust denial.

In the i24 News interview, Le Pen was asked about France’s role in the Holocaust, which her late father had minimized. “Atrocities were committed against Jews in France during World War II,” she said. “There was appeasement, and perhaps even collaboration with the Nazi occupiers. This is a historical fact. You won’t hear me trying to minimize or deny it.”

On the subject of U.S. President Donald Trump’s role in Middle East diplomacy, Le Pen offered her interpretation of his strategic mindset: “You know, with Donald Trump, you have to wait until the end to fully understand his line of thought. I’m just speculating, but it seems to me that Donald Trump understood that the terrible attack of Oct. 7 was actually intended to sabotage the agreements that were in the process, or close to being finalized, or intended to be signed.”

She suggested that Trump remains committed to these peace agreements.

“Apparently, he is very interested in reviving those agreements, because he believes, and he is probably right, that these agreements are the basis for a just and lasting peace,” she said. “However, he has his own approach, and so you always have to wait until the end to see what his real goal is. But I believe that this is his goal.”

Le Pen concluded by highlighting the broader significance of resuming peace negotiations: “And if that is the case, it is a good thing, because again, it proves, first of all, that the terrorists did not win, that is, they did not destroy the agreements. And that is a good thing.”

A French court in March convicted Marine Le Pen of misappropriating European Union funds to finance the movement. She was disqualified from running in the 2027 presidential election.

Marine Le Pen won an unprecedented 41.5% of the vote in the final round of the presidential elections in France in 2022, more than double her father’s best showing 20 years earlier.

Marine Le Pen and others within National Rally have defended Israel in its war against Hamas and other proxies that broke out on Oct. 7, 2023.

Many Jews in France vote for National Rally, which seeks to dramatically limit immigration from Muslim countries to France and the footprint of Islam in the public space.

In 2017, Le Pen said that she supported banning Muslim head coverings but that this would also require banning the public wearing of kippot due to constitutional principles on equality. She said this was a “sacrifice” French Jews needed to make to fight radical Islam and antisemitic violence by Muslims, and she has described her party as “the shield” for Jews in this endeavor.

The National Front is also opposed to the slaughter of animals for meat without stunning, which is required for producing both kosher and halal meat, and to the non-medical circumcision of boys, another custom shared by Jews and Muslims.

CRIF, the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, has boycotted the National Rally, as well as the far-left party France Unbowed of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, an anti-Israel populist who has been accused of antisemitism. Last year, France Unbowed formed a bloc with the Socialist Party, leading many Jews to vote for the National Rally in the legislative election.

© JNS