Free Republic

...Hollande is much more focused on tapping into Israel’s know-how to help his country’s beleaguered economy. “Israel is, from an economic point of view, with the high-tech industry, considered to be very valuable,” Dr. Tsilla Hershco, a senior research associate at Bar-Ilan University's Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies told The Media Line. “With all the turmoil around us, Israel is considered the one stable state in the Middle East from a political and economic point of view.” France has suffered greatly since 2008, when a worldwide economic downturn brought the European Union to the brink of collapse. Since then,...

France's Jewish community, Europe's largest, welcomed the defeat of extreme right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the presidential election on Sunday but warned that his score was worryingly high nonetheless. ''The French people have rejected the danger represented by Jean-Marie Le Pen, champion of the anti-Semitic, racist and xenophobic extreme right,'' the 600,000-strong Jewish community's main representative body, the CRIF, said in a statement. Le Pen, who once called the Nazi gas chambers a ''detail'' of history, secured 18 percent in a runoff against Jacques Chirac, the conservative incumbent. That was marginally higher than Le Pen scored two weeks ago...