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PARIS — Two representatives of the French far right — Marine Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal, and her National Rally party’s President Jordan Bardella — will head to Israel to attend an Israeli government conference on antisemitism Thursday, a milestone for a movement marred by a history of antisemitism.
Bardella and Maréchal are among a group of European far-right figures invited by Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli, whose parents emigrated from France to Israel, to an antisemitism conference on Wednesday and Thursday in Jerusalem.
The attendance of Bardella and Maréchal has drawn significant scrutiny in France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish population. Bardella is the first member of the National Rally to travel to Israel on an official visit, while Maréchal — who is a member of a smaller far-right party— will be the first member of the Le Pen family to visit the country.
Maréchal is the granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the National Rally’s predecessor alongside Nazi collaborators and was several times sentenced for hate speech and downplaying the significance of the Holocaust. Le Pen infamously called Nazi gas chambers used to commit genocide against millions of Jews a mere “point of detail” in World War II history on several occasions. He died earlier this year and Maréchal pledged to “pursue his mission.”
Maréchal’s mother was Le Pen’s second daughter. Early on in her political career, she referred to herself as Marion Maréchal Le Pen. She has since dropped Le Pen from her name.
Under the leadership of Marine Le Pen, Jean-Marie’s youngest daughter, the National Rally has sought to clean up its image and erase its antisemitic past. Marine even expelled her father from the party he founded in 2015 after he again reiterated his “point of detail” claim.
The National Rally has also in recent years vociferously supported Israel, particularly since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza. The party also makes the case that its platform against immigration would “shield” French Jews from “Islamist fundamentalism.”
Far-right guests
Other conference attendees include Maréchal and Bardella’s Spanish colleague in the European Parliament Hermann Tertsch, a member of the Vox party, and Sebastiaan Stöteler, an MEP from Geert Wilders’ Dutch Freedom Party.
The attendance of so many far-right European figures from parties with a troubling history of antisemitism or anti-Muslim statements has prompted backlash among prominent American and European Jews. French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy and the Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan Greenblatt both pulled out of the conference over the guest list.
Ariel Muzicant, head of the European Jewish Congress, accused Chikli of “stabbing [European Jewish communities] the back” in a letter to The Jerusalem Post and the head of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, Yonathan Arfi, accused the National Rally of trying to use antisemitism to score political points. Both Bardella and Marine Le Pen have accused Arfi and his organization of only representing Jews on the left end of the political spectrum.
Despite her being the party’s presidential candidate and its de facto leader, Le Pen was not invited to the conference.
“The name Le Pen may still be frightening for the Israeli people, a segment of its public opinion,” said a National Rally parliamentarian, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Louis Aliot, the mayor of the largest National Rally-controlled city, Perpignan, told POLITICO that Bardella’s trip would be a first step which could eventually give Le Pen an opportunity for an official visit.
“If Israel doesn’t want to host her, we’ll deal with it. But I don’t think Israel has enough friends today to pick and choose,” Aliot said.
