In September 1987, during a radio interview with RTL, the late Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the French National Front, stated that the gas chambers were ‘a detail of the history of the second world war.’
This week, Jordan Bardella, the president of the Rassemblement National, the National Front’s rebranded successor, visited the hallowed Yad Vashem holocaust memorial in Jerusalem and declared, ‘Concentration camps were the pinnacle of barbarism. No one will be able to forget what was the worst genocidal enterprise ever conducted.’
Bardella, heir to Le Pen, also visited the site of the October 7, 2023 massacre at the Nova music festival, where he met survivors and attentively listened to their blood-curdling stories, and held meetings with Israeli politicians. This was in the margins of his attendance at the International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism organised by Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli.
The minister has worked to strengthen Israel’s relationship with Europe’s new-right parties, which Israel had long boycotted due to their historic ties to anti-Semitism and Nazism.
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