France’s ultranationalist National Front Party suspended one of its candidates for posting a picture of a burning Israeli flag and anti-Semitic statements on Facebook.

Francois Chatelain of Neuville-en-Ferrain near Lille posted the picture earlier this month with a caption reading: “This is France here!” according to the Le Figaro daily newspaper. Another picture showed a masculine hand pulling away an Israeli flag to reveal the French tricolor.

Another post concerned suspicions of sexual abuse at Beth Hanna, a Jewish school in Paris. Chatelain wrote: “Well, that’s a Jew.” A post also showed former French President Nicolas Sarkozy with a rabbi and warned against “the lobby which runs the media, finance and provokes wars for colonialist and economic reasons (the Greater Israel project and the elimination of Iran and Syria).”

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The posting by Chatelain, a 28-year-old candidate for the National Front Party in local elections, was brought to the attention of party leader Marine Le Pen by Gerald Darmanin, a lawmaker in France’s National Assembly for Sarkozy’s center-right UMP party.

“The images and comments posted by Francois Chatelain on his Facebook page are in total contradiction with the political line of the FN,” read a statement released by the party last week. “As a result, Mr. Chatelain is suspended from the National Front and his registration as a candidate for the municipal elections has been withdrawn. He will shortly be called before the party’s disciplinary commission with a view to him being expelled.”

The party garnered 23 percent of the vote in the region in the first round of the presidential elections last year, compared with a national average of 13 percent.

Under Marine Le Pen, the National Front has sought greater respectability by distancing its policies from some anti-Semitic and racist statements made by Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen’s father, and other top National Front figures.

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