Posted on 04/22/2002 7:06:36 AM PDT by truthandlife
The stunning second-place triumph of anti-immigrant populist Jean-Marie Le Pen in French elections has sent tremors of fear through a Jewish community already buffeted by a wave of anti-Semitic attacks.
Pollsters said President Jacques Chirac would handily defeat Le Pen in a presidential runoff vote on May 5.
But French Jews and Muslims alike pointed to the victory for Le Pen, who once dismissed the Holocaust as a "detail" of history, as a dangerous sign of French intolerance of minorities.
Finance Minister Laurent Fabius denounced the victory of the National Front leader as "a cataclysm of terrifying proportions" and added: "Tonight, on the left but not only on the left, many people are simply crying. This is not the France we love."
Anger and concern rippled across the country that is home to Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim communities but which waited more than half a century before officially admitting that France helped the Nazis persecute Jews during World War Two.
Pockets of protest sprouted in Paris, with dozens of youths wearing T-shirts reading "I'm ashamed" in one part of the city while elsewhere Parisians burned Le Pen banners. Other anti-Le Pen protests grew in Lyon, Grenoble, Lille and Strasbourg.
"There is a slippery slope to greater violence and we have not seen the worst of it," Shimon Samuels of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre told Reuters.
Samuels blamed the government of Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, knocked out of the race by Le Pen, for inaction following the torching of synagogues and desecration of Jewish tombs in France since Israel launched an offensive on the Palestinian territories on March 29.
"Had they taken measures, that could have been a valuable tool against what we saw tonight," Samuels said.
"Chirac is going to be influenced by this election. He has to respond to Le Pen's constituency in dealing with minorities. Many are xenophobic."
Samuels said an increasing number of fearful Jews were leaving France to set up their lives elsewhere and Le Pen's electoral success would provide more incentive.
SHOCK AMONG JEWS
Le Pen, a 73-year-old former paratrooper, surged ahead in recent weeks as Chirac and Jospin focused their campaigns on fighting crime -- one of Le Pen's favourite populist issues.
Le Pen toned down his usual anti-immigrant rhetoric this year as law and order, his other main issue, came to the fore with both Chirac and Jospin calling for a tough line on crime.
"I am very shocked that people could actually vote for a man like Le Pen," Joel Davide, 48, said from the food shop he co-owns in the Marais district of Paris, home to many of the city's Jews.
His business partner, Joel Bivita, was as angry at the French for voting for Le Pen as he was at the candidate himself.
"I don't like Le Pen at all because he is anti-Semitic," Bivita said. "He doesn't like Jews. He doesn't like Arabs. He doesn't like anybody else except the French. This shows that the French are two-faced. They say one thing and they go and vote for somebody like Le Pen."
Alex Durois regretted that he joined the droves of French who abstained from voting on Sunday and wished he had cast his ballot against Le Pen.
"If Le Pen wins (the second round), I will go to Israel," said Durois, 23, who works in a mobile phone shop in the Marais. Born and raised in France, Durois said the situation for minorities was "very dangerous in France today."
Members of the Muslim community viewed Le Pen's showing negatively but were more reticent to comment before the candidate expanded on his policies.
"It is France which has lost today. It's difficult to believe that many French people voted for Le Pen," hospital worker Sami Fitouri said. "He has never presented any ideas about the economy or his social programme. He has just been campaigning on xenophobic ideas."
Fouad Imarraine, manager of the Tawid cultural centre in Seine Saint Denis, north of Paris, said: "I hope this is a protest vote but I am not sure. In any case these elections reinforce our determination to work to change things."
Truth is at the rate the current government is letting in Algerian moslems France's jews would likely be better off with an anti-immigration president in charge.
I actually agree with you here. However Jews are already outnimbered big time. 1 in 10 in France are Muslim.
I would like to see Le Pen meet with prominent Jewish leaders and explain his new position that since Jews have been part of France for 1600 years, they are real French.
As for the Holocaust comment, Le Pen should explain it in a manner that does not minimize the Holocaust, but explains the total slaughter by socialists this century.
I agree that this comment should be examined.
I am unfamiliar with the context under which it was made, and wary of those who would "spin" it into a smear.
I agree. I think what the Leftists are afraid of is that Chirac would be forced to form a coalition with LePen, and the Communists would be shut out of power.
While the Holocaust was a big event to the Jewish community, the numbers are small compared to the slaughters committed by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.
It comes as a shock to many that WWII was not just about the Jews. World wide about 45 million people were killed. A whole lot more Russians and Chinese were killed than Jews. Many, many people other than Jews suffered. I do not want to offend you, but in my opinion, even though they are not members of the chosen race, I believe the suffering of all humans during that war was lamentable. Not only was the suffering of the Jews horrible but the suffering of the Russians, Chinese, Romanians, etc was bad too.
How so, Fouad? By dousing Synagogues with gasoline and lighting them on fire?
By and large they didnt vote for Jospin, whose gov't it was that turned a 'blind eye'. Thats one of the reasons LePen came in second.
Chirac is merely President and not Prime Minister. Two different positions altogether.
Tell LePen that.
Thats what I'm hoping, too.
I guess the mass murder of millions and millions of people that flag and communism has stood over is just a "small detail".
I would like to see a more objective source of how french jews feel about Le Pen than just a liberal news-media representing people as they see fit.
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