Zemmour: French Jews criticize hopes of right-wing Jewish president | Issues of Prejudice

Eric Zemmour, from France right presidential representative, has produced a controversial career as a prolific journalist and regular TV commentator for almost 20 years.

From 2019 to 2021, he participated in a daily demonstration on the CNews viewing platform which allowed his right-hand ideas about migration and Islam to spread to many places.

However at his first political rally on December 5, Zemmour appeared to boast of a small minority, calling himself a “Berber Jew who came from across the Mediterranean.”

Zemmour is of Jewish-Algerian origin, but his comments on Jewish history have been widely criticized as offensive and false.

Some critics call him the chairman of the chair (“historien du dimanche”), but many, especially those of the Jewish community, have found his remarks to be no joke.

Chalom Lellouche, a rabbi in Levallois-Perret, a town near Paris, told Al Jazeera that Zemmour’s words “disturbed and disturbed us. We can no longer write our history today – the history of the French Jews. “

Zemmour angered many in September when he spoke of a dark topic in French history: the role of the Vichy government during the Holocaust.

In September, he he repeated a doctrine he has been saying since 2014, that “Vichy protected French Jews and delivered foreign Jews.”

This conflict seeks to cite Philippe Pétain – head of state of Vichy France – as the savior of French Jews during the French occupation of France between 1940 and 1944.

Historians have been working on the subject and have found that between 1940 and 1945, 76,000 Jews were deported to France. Of these, 24,000 were French citizens.

Although France lost fewer Jews compared to other European countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands, historians agree that it was not Pétain’s fault.

Instead, a number of difficult things were happening, including, according to American historian Robert O Paxton, the lack of material from Nazi Germany.

When Zemmour’s historical controversy over Vichy broke out again, foreign and French historians corrected the matter.

Paxton told Le Monde newspaper that “Vichy’s laws apply to all Jews, leaving no stone unturned,” while French historian Laurent Joly told Franceinfo radio that “Vichy’s policy was consistent with anti-Semitic policies aimed at eliminating As many evil Jews as possible. ”

The French Rabbi Haïm Korsia declared in October that Zemmour was “definitely” an anti-Semitic and “obviously” racist.

At one point, Zemmour wrote that Jewish children, Arié and Gabriel Sandler, aged 6, and Myriam Monsonego, aged eight, who were murdered in 2012 in Toulouse by Mohammed Merah, were “aliens and wanted to continue to die. ” for they were buried in Israel.

Zemmour has previously said that French citizens with “non-French” names should change their names to match, and similarly, experts believe they used the Toulouse invasion model to question the plight of grieving families. in France.

“They use the story to say, ‘We love the country in which we were placed’, and, as a result, sow seeds of doubt,” said Marc Knobel, a French Jewish historian who investigates anti-Semitism.

Knobel explained that Zemmour was trying to distort the history of politics and that spreading his ideas was “painful”.

“My father, who is French, was ten years old and wore a yellow star. He had to hide. He experienced what others have experienced, namely, discrimination, expulsion from all schools and occupations, imprisonment, concentration camps, and expulsion. So no one jokes about it. ”

Despite being a Jew, Zemmour has expressed admiration for anti-Semitic people such as Maurice Barrès, a French novelist, journalist and politician who died in 1923, and Charles Maurras, a patriot and late scholar.

Zemmour’s political party in the 2022 election is called the “Reconquête” (“Reconquest”). Critics see the name as a synonym for the Spanish “Reconquista” – a time of history when Christian militias expelled Muslims and Jews from the Iberia Peninsula.

According to Knobel, Zemmour’s faith is irrelevant; which connects Zemmour with Semitic anti-Semitic history and its most accurate views.

“His words are very harsh on the minority, the refugees, the refugees, because there is a continuation of politics,” the historian said. “His mind picks him up and makes him the right man.”

A prominent Frenchman, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen’s father, said he could vote for Zemmour over his daughter.

Marine Le Pen, who contested Emmanuel Macron in the second round in 2017, is set to vote next year.

Elder Le Pen told Le Monde: “The only difference between Eric and me is that he is a Jew. It is difficult to call him a Nazi or a fascist. This gives her a greater freedom. ”

Under French law, data collection on social media is prohibited, so it is not possible to determine whether a minority supports Zemmour.

Large numbers of French Jewish groups say they believe Jewish voters should not vote for the right pundit.

Recent polls suggest that Zemmour could receive almost 15 percent of the vote in the April 2022 elections, which is less than enough to run for a second term.

Regardless of how they work, political analysts are concerned that Zemmour’s extremist views and distortions of history have been the subject of much controversy.

On December 8, President Emmanuel Macron became the first French president from Charles De Gaulle in 1959 to Vichy, the central town where Pétain established his coalition government.

Although Macron did not officially announce his re-election, the trip appeared to be a symbolic one and a mere one based on Zemmour’s comments a few months ago.

Macron did not name the French scholar in detail but said that history was “written by historians, and it is a good thing to adhere to it. We must not deceive, tamper with, or corrupt.”

I am the potential for right-hand numbers is rising in France, Rabbi Lellouche believes that interfaith dialogue should be encouraged.

He said he was “very angry” with Zemmour’s Islamophobia; Zemmour has previously said that Muslims “control” French territories and that Islam is a “terrorist” religion.

“I have no idea of ​​a Jew like Eric Zemmour. To me, humanity and the whole universe are the norm in Judaism. We will not close the doors, we have received. ”