Some 68 million French citizens woke up Sunday morning to the presidential runoff election being hailed as the most critical in decades. This election will decide France's character over the coming years – and could greatly influence its relations with Israel and the fate of the half-million-strong Jewish community in France.
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The runoff election is between the incumbent president, Emmanuel Macron, and his far-right rival Marine Le Pen, who has managed to reduce the gap between the two compared to the 2017 election. Le Pen, of course, is the youngest daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, and replaced him as head of the party he had led for 39 years. Le Pen, the father, claimed the gas chambers at Auschwitz were a "detail of the history of World War II" and even defended Henri-Philippe Pétain, the leader of the Vichy regime that collaborated with the Nazis.
Marine Le Pen holds similar views, but she is more sophisticated than her father. She understood that ahead of the election, it would benefit her to moderate her comments about Jews and Israel, letting others do the work. Mainly, this mostly pertains to Jewish former French TV pundit Eric Zemmour, who ran in the first round of the election and won 7.1% of the votes (which translates to nearly 2.5 million voters). Zemmour, who was convicted of inciting hatred in the past, claimed during the campaign that the Vichy government actually "protected Jews," that Alfred Dreyfus was perhaps wrongfully exonerated, and called on his supporters to vote for Le Pen in the runoff. French Jews were aghast at the Jewish candidate's call to support her, and ahead of the vote were more fearful than ever for their future existence in the country.
Although Marine Le Pen kept silent in recent months in relation to Israel and Jews, she only did so because it served her temporary interests. Her views are established: She champions ridding the public sphere of all religious symbols, including Jewish symbols; she has supported a ban on kosher slaughter in France; declared she would prohibit Jews from holding dual citizenship; and contrary to the official position of the French government, she also doesn't recognize France's role in collaborating with the Nazis and sending its Jewish citizens to the concentration camps. Let's be clear: She has not abandoned her views, rather she has "hidden" them for the time being to appear less extreme.
There are those who claim that Le Pen is a friend of Israel, but this is a grave mistake. She espouses turning Jerusalem into a city with a special international status that would serve as the capital of the three major religions. For all intents and purposes, this means Jerusalem would no longer be under Israel's control, rather subject to the whims of the United Nations.
Beyond all this, Le Pen supports nationalistic regimes and is friendly with more than a few extremist leaders in Europe and across the globe. She opposes dual citizenship and wants to abolish pensions for French citizens who no longer live in France, such that the tens of thousands of French immigrants living in Israel would no longer be eligible to receive a pension. For many of them, this would be a severe financial blow, and Israel, too, will lose revenue as a result.
Le Pen is bad for the Jews and bad for Israel. Even if Macron ultimately emerges victorious and is elected to a second term, it will be his last one in office because France has term limits. The youth in France support the extremist parties, and it's very possible that it's merely a matter of time before Le Pen becomes president of France. In such a circumstance, the question for Jews will no longer be "who do we vote for," but "to which country should we escape."
This is also the place to call on the decision-makers in Israel: A short time before we mark Holocaust Remembrance Day on Wednesday evening, the French election serves as yet another reminder that antisemitism and racism are still very much alive in France in particular and in Europe in general, and that it stands to reason we will soon see a massive immigration wave from France to Israel. The writing is on the wall, and Israel needs to prepare, take the initiative, and implement a plan right now to bring tens of thousands of Jews to Israel from France. Otherwise, it could be too late.
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