From JTA, the ‘Global Jewish News Source’:
The number of Jews who voted for the far-right National Front party soared in the most recent presidential election from the previous two votes, surveys showed.
In the surveys of French Jews, some 13.5 percent of 1,095 respondents who self-identified as Jews said they voted for National Front President Marine Le Pen in the 2012 presidential elections.
Asked about the two previous presidential elections, from 2002 and 2007, respectively only 6.1 percent and 4.3 percent of Jewish voters polled said they chose the National Front candidate — Le Pen’s father and predecessor as party leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has a history of convictions for “inciting racial hatred” and Holocaust denial…
The National Front is a vociferous critic of what it describes as the government’s inaction to stop France’s “Islamization.”
Overall, National Front candidates received 19.2 percent of the vote in the first round in 2002 and 10.6 percent and 19 percent in the first rounds in the following two elections.
In a statement released Friday, National Front General Secretary Nicolas Bay blamed the government’s immigration policy for a 91 percent increase in the number of anti-Semitic attacks documented in France during the first seven months of 2014 over the corresponding period last year.
Muslims are the main perpetrators of anti-Semitic attacks on Jews, according to the Jewish watchdog BNVCA, or the National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism.
