Real or calculated clumsiness?
In this singularly violent and divisive presidential campaign, the comments made by Yannick Jadot on Sunday on Radio J were likely to cause trouble.
The environmental candidate felt that Éric Zemmour wears “the same thing” as former FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen but “the most perverse difference is that Zemmour is Jewish.
It means that in fact, he acts as a service Jew for the anti-Semites”.
The Green MEP stigmatized in particular the statements of the far-right candidate on Marshal Pétain who, according to Zemmour, “saved” French Jews.
These words touching on a subject as sensitive as racism and anti-Semitism immediately provoked an outcry in the political arena.
"It's shocking, it's shameful this resurgence of far-left anti-Semitism, and we must condemn these remarks", denounced on BFMTV, LR Éric Ciotti.
They did not fail, either, to create a certain distancing on the left.
We "understand what Yannick Jadot meant (…) but the fact that Éric Zemmour is Jewish [n't] changes anything", underlined on France Info, Olivier Faure, the number one of the PS.
This start of the controversy prompted Yannick Jadot, invited this Monday morning on RMC, to clarify his position.
“Eric Zemmour, basically, uses his religion to serve as an excuse for the entire far right which was only waiting for such a representative to free up speech (…) There is a whole section of the population which has found in Zemmour someone very practical to assume anti-Semitism, made a point of specifying Yannick Jadot.
So basically, he's the useful idiot of anti-Semitism.
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Last October, Jean-Luc Mélenchon admitted that he had “poorly expressed himself” by declaring on BFMTV that Éric Zemmour should not “be anti-Semitic because he reproduces many cultural scenarios linked to Judaism”.
“This campaign, whatever the political camp, no longer makes sense”
On the side of the Jewish representative institutions, it seems that we want to keep reason.
“This campaign, whatever the political camp, no longer makes sense.
There is no need to highlight statements that are not worth it,” said a representative of one of these institutions.
The most virulent, Ariel Goldmann, president of the FSJU and the Foundation of French Judaism, however, estimated in a tweet: "I am not one of the supporters of Éric Zemmour, quite the contrary, but Yannick Jadot with your expression ugly jew of service you green have crossed a red line: green + red = brown !!
The presidential did not need that!
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I'm not one of @ZemmourEric's supporters, quite the contrary, but @yjadot with your ugly expression of "service Jew" you green, have crossed a red line: green + red = brown!!
The #Presidential didn't need that @fsju @Le_CRIF @RCJRADIO
— Ariel Goldmann (@GOLDMANNAriel) February 14, 2022
Conversely, the Crif, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions, did not see fit to modify the list of guests at its annual dinner to be held on February 24, 50 days before the first round of the presidential election.
At this very official dinner, Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Éric Zemmour are not welcome because "the extremes have no place", insists the president of Crif, Francis Khalifat in the daily L'Opinion.
The Reconquest candidate, adds the president of Crif, “has placed himself to the right of Marine Le Pen (RN).
Through his attempts to rewrite history, he established himself as the leader of revisionism in our country.
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On the other hand, Yannick Jadot, he remains invited.
However, in 2017, the MEP, already a candidate for the Greens, before joining the socialist Benoît Hamon, had not been invited to this dinner, described at the time as "worldly" by Julien Bayou, then spokesperson for 'EELV.
