Valls And Le Pen Reelected To French Parliament
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(JTA) — France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen and former Prime Minister Manuel Valls both secured seats in a parliamentary election that was dominated by the party of President Emmanuel Macron.
Valls, a centrist member of the Socialist Party who last year in a speech called anti-Zionism a form of anti-Semitism and who in 2009 said he has an “eternal bond” with the Jewish people because of his marriage to a Jewish woman, narrowly beat the far-left politician Jean-Luc Melenchon, who has been accused of espousing anti-Semitic rhetoric in speeches, in the Essone region in northern France. Valls won 50.3 percent of the vote there, according to FranceInter.
Meyer Habib, a lawmaker for the UDI centrist party and a former leader of the CRIF umbrella of French Jewish communities, was re-elected to parliament as the representative of the electoral 8th District, which comprises Turkey, Israel, Italy, Greece, the Vatican, San Marino and Malta.
Israel is home to more than 70,000 French citizens eligible to vote out of 111,736 throughout the district. During his campaign, Meyer has received the endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a longtime personal friend of Habib.
