A controversial French statesman is facing a backlash from Jewish groups, after accusing B’nai B’rith of effectively blocking his political career. Jean-Marie Le Pen, creator of the National Front party, made the accusation in an interview with French weekly paper Minute. Le Pen has been retired from politics for some years, but is still titled as honorary president for National Front, France’s third largest political party and a far-right group often accused of xenophobic views. “The …More

French right-wing politician Marine Le Pen clarified her support of a ban on wearing kippahs is public. Le Pen, leader of the National Front, told French television on Saturday that "Jewish skullcaps are obviously not a problem in our country,” but France has to “ban them in the name of equality,” Haaretz reported. A day earlier she was quoted in an interview with the French daily Le Monde that she supports a ban on wearing kipahs in public in addition to a ban on Muslim …More

A far right French politician made headlines today, calling for a ban on kippahs in public areas. Marine Le Pen, of France’s National Front, made the remark in an interview with the Le Monde publication. She was promoting a ban on Muslim headscarves and other religious symbols. "Obviously if we ban the veil, we would ban the kippa in public places,” she said. Le Pen is notoriously tough on Islam and gave the interview as France grapples with tensions over an anti-Mohammad cartoon published this …More

French politician Marine Le Pen is suing a Jewish philosopher for libel. Le Pen, the leader of the National Front party, filed the suit after Bernard-Henri Levy drew a connection between the far-right politico and a recent anti-Semitic attack. In an article published online and distributed by CRIF, France’s Jewish body, Levy wrote, “Is it really a coincidence that this aggression follows a campaign in which one candidate, Ms. Le Pen, has systematically lampooned Jewish-sounding names in …More

Rachael Levy is a freelance writer who recently graduated from The American University of Paris with a degree in international and comparative politics. You can follow her on Twitter at @rachael_levy. Extreme right wing candidate Marine Le Pen of the Front National won the support of nearly one in five French voters in the first round of the French presidential elections on April 22. With 17.9 percent of the vote, or about 6.4 million votes, she won over around 1.6 million more votes than her father, Jean-Marie …More

With elections looming, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon weighed in on the ritual slaughter debate by urging Muslims and Jews to reconsider their antiquated ritual slaughter laws. "Religions should think about keeping traditions that don't have much in common with today's state of science, technology and health problems," Fillon told Europe 1 radio Monday. These "ancestral traditions" once made sense for hygienic reasons, but now are outdated, he said. "We live in a modern society." Religious slaughter …More

With only two months until the French elections, conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy is trailing behind Socialist candidate François Hollande in the polls. To make up the difference, Sarkozy is attempting to gain the Jewish vote. A recent article in Le Figaro argued that the French-Jewish vote primarily falls to the right. During Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign, a significant number of French Jews supported him. Jérôme Fourquet, the director of the French polling organization IFOP, told the …More

Five thousand demonstrators swarmed the Hofburg Palace Friday to protest a ball attended by Europe’s prominent far-right figures because it occurred on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The group picketed the annual Wiener Korporationsring ball in Vienna, chanting "Nazis out!" and holding posters depicting Holocaust victims that read, "Don't dance on my grave." Mostly right-wing student fraternities organize the WKR ball, part of the famous Austrian ball season. The controversial event was attended …More

France’s far right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said on Friday that her meeting with the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations was not the result of a mixup, despite the ambassador’s claims to the contrary. The National Front leader organized the meeting as part of a campaign to build her international profile prior to next year’s French presidential elections. Le Pen invited about 30 people to the lunch meeting on Thursday. Among the diplomats, only Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor, …More

Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right Front National and a contender in France's presidential elections next year, will not receive special treatment when she visits the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Le Pen, the daughter of Jean Marie Le Pen, the founder of the party who has a conviction for Holocaust denial, said in a statement that she would go to the museum during a Washington visit this week. Museum spokesman Andrew Hollinger told JTA that the museum had no formal notice of her arrival, and that …More