Eric Zamor may become the first serious Jewish candidate for president during the period of the Fifth Republic of France after World War II.
Polls recently released ahead of the spring elections indicate that he has the support of 16% of the vote, placing him at the same starting point as the leading candidates facing President Emanuel Macron.
But there is a catch here: Zamor, a far-right journalist, intellectual and full-time provocateur has not yet officially announced that he is running.
Most French Jews would prefer him to stay outside, and try to stay away from him.
"He is an extreme right-wing politician, and as such he poses a danger to the republic. He may be Jewish, but he is not the voice of the Jewish community," said Joel Margie, president of the Consistwar, a major French Jewish organization.
Said most drug dealers are Arab or African.
Singing (Photo: Reuters)
Zamor, 63, has nurtured a conservative audience thanks to a devout nationalist movement that opposes immigration, and one that sees France as a society under siege by foreign, Muslim and other influences. Some of the things he said led to convictions and fines for hate speech - in 2011, he called Muslim immigrants “invaders” and in 2016 he said most drug dealers are Arabs or Africans.
Some of his critics say his legacy is tainted with hypocrisy: his parents are immigrants from Algeria.
So far, French Jewish leaders and organizations have not invested much energy in responding to Zamor's rhetoric, but his sudden meteoric rise in the polls - despite the fact that in interviews he gave a few months before the election he was careful to remain vague about his political career - has forced them to take public positions on the candidate. His support rates match those of Marin Le Pen, who received a third of the votes in the first round of the 2017 election as the leader of the right-wing National Union Party.
In the video: Arik Zmor, an extreme right-wing Jewish journalist who manages to challenge President Makron (Photo: Reuters)
The attitudes of the French Jewish community regarding the psalmist are complicated, mainly because of his views on several issues directly related to the Jew.
Zamor, who has published best-selling books on politics and society, spoke openly about his Jewish identity and said that he occasionally goes to the synagogue and wears a kippah there.
Despite this, he seems to support the idea of banning the wearing of a kippah in public, alongside other religious signs.
In a confrontation that took place in 2016, he likened the wearing of a kippah to a "religious selfie" and said that wearing a kippah is "forcing a person's religion on others."
The requirement for Jews to wear kippahs, he added, is akin to the requirement to wear the yellow badge that the Nazis forced Jews to wear on their clothes during the Holocaust.
Even more offensive to many French Jews is the fact that it defends a controversial theory that the Vichy government, which collaborated with the Nazis, sacrificed foreign Jews living in France to save French Jews during the Holocaust.
This theory, which is accepted by some historians, is hotly contested by other historians, who claim that the Vichy government also betrayed Jews with French citizenship.
"Vichy is protecting the Jews of France," he said last month on CNews, a French network equivalent to the American Fox News.
Expected to win despite its low support percentage.
Macaroni (Photo: Reuters)
Zamor also questioned the innocence of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew of German descent and a captain in the French army, whose prosecution for treason and espionage was widely condemned as an anti-Semitic charge. In a panel held on television in 2020, Zamor said that even if Dreyfus was innocent, he may have been a target "because he was German, and not because he was Jewish."
Zamor is able to upset even some of the Jews identified with the far right, who could have been his biggest supporters. Last year he told CNews that if Israel has nuclear weapons, Iran must not be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons.
The French League for Jewish Defense, a group on the far right of the French Jewish arc, said in a statement that although it "regularly congratulates Eric Zamor and defends his courage against the Islamists," his remarks on Iran point to "ignorance or bad faith that undermines the credibility of his claims."
These positions, together with his broad ideology, caused most of the French Jewish establishment and prominent Jewish figures to oppose the hymn.
"He is not a useful idiot - he is a useful Jew and the new leader of Holocaust denial in our country," Francis Calif, head of CRIF, the umbrella organization of Jewish communities in France, wrote last week in an opinion column published in many French media.
Renowned Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld and his son Arno wrote earlier this year in an opinion column in Le Monde that Zmour "tramples on national and Jewish values," declaring that "Jews must fight the far right."
Bernard Henri Levy, a well-known center-left Jewish philosopher, wrote an opinion column in Le Point magazine last week, in which he edited parallels between Zamor and former US President Donald Trump, arguing that both are insufficient choices for anyone who values Jewish values.
"Five years ago, I told American Jews who were tempted by Trumpism: making an alliance with him could be suicide. Now I say the same things to Jews in France who are tempted by the evil simplicity of Eric Zamor," who denies the "Jewish generosity, Jewish vulnerability, Jewish humanism and alienation of the Jewish people. ", Levy wrote.
Like Trump, Zmor tended to adopt a narrative of fear driven by the idea of ethnic replacement.
"There is a danger that our country will die, that its population will be replaced by another, and so will civilization," he said in an October 1 interview, emphasizing - as Trump did in his election campaign - the difference between him and the professional politicians facing him, such as Marin Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, the president of France affiliated with the center, is expected to win even though he enjoys support rates below 40%.
Le Pen the father also supports
But Zmor still receives some support within the Jewish community. Tribune Juive, one of the community's oldest magazines, recently published a series of opinion pieces written by people who support the psalm, or feel compelled to return fire to its critics in the Jewish establishment.
In one of those articles, William Fitoussi, an insurance agent from Paris, called Zmour "the only politician seeking to put an end to the flow of millions, including those who murdered their brothers into the community."
Eli Sasson, a dentist from the Paris area and a columnist for the Tribune Juive, wrote in a column published on October 17: are good'".
Rudolf grandfather, a photographer from Paris, criticized Tribune Juive in whom he called "the VIPs of the left", like Levi, who admired the former president Francois Mitterrand despite his personal friendship with René Bouscat was a senior Vichy regime collaborated with the Nazis.
Sarah wrote a The Tribune of the psalmist has "abominable opinions that require discussion, but not through his Jewish identity."
A battle for the leadership of the extreme right.
Marine Le Pen (Photo: AP)
Jean-Marie Le Pen - a notorious Holocaust denier and vocal anti-Semite who founded the National Union Party, now led by his daughter - is also an ardent supporter of Zamor.
"The only difference between Eric Zamor and me is that he is a Jew," Penn Sr. told Le Monde in an interview published earlier this month. "It's hard to label him a Nazi or a fascist. It gives him more freedom."
In response earlier this month, Patrick Klugman, a lawmaker in the Paris City Council of the Jewish Socialist Party for Radio RCJ, said: ".
Hundreds of antisemitic incidents, including numerous violent attacks, occur every year in France, mostly in low-income neighborhoods where Jews and Muslims live.
At least 12 Jews have been murdered in the past decade in antisemitic attacks carried out by jihadist terrorists in France.
On the streets of Sarcelles, a slum in northern Paris where many Jewish and Muslim residents live, "no one expects Zamor to become the first Jewish president, nor does he show much interest in it," said Olivia Arafi, a local butcher, chopping kosher chicken.
"Zmor seems to me like a little man who likes to talk," Arafi added.
Like Zamor, Arafi's parents came to France from Algeria.
"Still," Arafi said, "it's good that Zamor has arrived. I think he may open doors for others, perhaps for more suitable people, by showing them that France is ready to hear new voices from new places."