While the Jewish community represents only a small fraction of France’s 66 million people, attacks targeting French Jews, synagogues, and Holocaust memorials have spiked following Hamas’ massacre against Israel on October 7.

Now, Jewish voters are agonizing over how to choose in an election where the centrist camp of President Emmanuel Macron is bracing for another possible beating this Sunday by the far-right National Rally.

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However, a prominent French Rabbi believes that neither party is beneficial for France’s Jewish future.

“It is clear today that there is no future for Jews in France. I tell everyone who is young to go to Israel or a more secure country,” Grande Synagogue of Paris Chief Rabbi Moshe Sebbag told the Jerusalem Post.

“The moment you feel part of a country’s history, it doesn’t become another country’s history. After generations, the French Jews are very French and feel very French.”

France’s National Party was co-founded by notorious antisemite Jean-Marie Le Pen to give the far right a national political platform. Jean-Marie is on record describing the Holocaust as a “mere detail” and has been convicted more than 15 times for defending Nazi crimes, including stating that the Nazi occupation of France was “not particularly inhumane.”

However, in a shift from its antisemitic past, the party now led by his daughter Marine Le Pen has become an unlikely ally of Israel’s defensive war against hamas. The party won over 30% of the vote in the June 9th elections, a setback that led Macron to acknowledge defeat and call for snap elections.

Yet, for Rabbi Sebbag and France’s Jewish community, it is difficult to trust a party with antisemitic roots dating back to World War II.

“Many Ashkenazi Jewish families here since before World War II couldn’t think to vote for National Rally, yet the Left has been antisemitic in recent times. The Jews are in the middle because they don’t know who hates them more,” Sebbag said.

According to recent ADL statistics, France has experienced a surge in antisemitism since October 7 with reported incidents increasing from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 in 2023.

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