Jews Blame Apathy for Gains of Right Wing French National Front

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By JTA April 1, 2014

Jewish groups in France and Europe blamed voters’ indifference for the success of the country’s far-right National Front party in local elections.

National Front candidates were elected mayors in 11 municipalities in Sunday’s elections — a dramatic increase over the party’s previous record of four mayors in 1997, the news site europe1.fr reported.

“The message is loud and clear that the French electorate is either not taking the threat from the far right seriously or they do not care,” Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the European Conference of Rabbis, said in a statement Monday.

Jewish groups and leaders have feared National Front’s rise because the party’s leaders include politicians with a penchant for anti-Semitic and xenophobic rhetoric. Among them is Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party’s founder and honorary president and father of the party’s current leader, Marine Le Pen.

Jean-Marie Le Pen has several convictions for inciting racial hatred against minorities and denying or minimizing the Holocaust.

“This result should sound alarm bells across Europe and indeed the world, that the politics of hatred are making a formidable comeback,” Goldschmidt said.

The Union of Jewish Students of France, or UEJF, said in a statement Sunday following the close of polls that it ”regrets the success of National Front in many municipalities” and blamed the result on voters’ and authorities’ indifference to efforts of organizations like UEJF to prevent National Front victories.

“Unfortunately, it was the refusal to adopt a Republican Front [against the National Front] that gave the National Front the possibility of running the city,” the statement said.

Goldschmidt also referred to perceived inaction, saying: “No doubt most analysts will characterize the success [of the National Front] as a protest against what many see as the failings of [French President] Francois Hollande but there is no question that it benefited enormously from a record abstention of 38.5 percent.”

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