French Jewish Group Distances Itself from Israeli Conference Inviting Far-Right Leaders

On 24 March 2025, The Times of Israel report­ed that France’s main Jew­ish asso­ci­a­tion has pub­licly dis­tanced itself from invi­ta­tions extend­ed to French far-right lead­ers to attend an anti­semitism con­fer­ence in Israel. The arti­cle begins:

France’s main Jew­ish asso­ci­a­tion on Mon­day dis­tanced itself from an unprece­dent­ed invi­ta­tion for two key fig­ures in the French far-right to attend a con­fer­ence this week in Israel on the fight against anti­semitism. Jor­dan Bardel­la, par­ty leader of the Nation­al Ral­ly (RN), and his fel­low MEP Mar­i­on Marechal, who leads anoth­er far-right move­ment and is the niece of three-time RN pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Marine Le Pen, have been invit­ed by the Israeli gov­ern­ment to attend the con­fer­ence on March 26 and 27. Bardel­la will be the first RN leader to vis­it Israel while Marechal, the grand­daugh­ter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who co-found­ed the RN as the Nation­al Front (FN), will be the first mem­ber of the Le Pen fam­i­ly to vis­it Israel. The par­tic­i­pa­tion of the pair and oth­er far-right Euro­pean fig­ures has prompt­ed a slew of Jew­ish par­tic­i­pants to pull out, among them the head of the Anti-Defama­tion League and Britain’s chief rab­bi. This invi­ta­tion “has come from Israel” and “does not involve the Jew­ish insti­tu­tions of France,” said Yonathan Arfi, head of the Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Coun­cil of French Jew­ish Insti­tu­tions (CRIF), the main umbrel­la asso­ci­a­tion of French Jew­ish groups… Read more

Key Points:

• CRIF leader Yonathan Arfi empha­sized his­tor­i­cal dis­trust toward Nation­al Ral­ly and warned against polit­i­cal exploita­tion of anti­semitism issues.
• Jor­dan Bardel­la defend­ed his par­ty’s evo­lu­tion, argu­ing the RN is no longer the Nation­al Front co-found­ed by Jean-Marie Le Pen.
• The Jerusalem con­fer­ence has faced mul­ti­ple high-pro­file with­drawals, includ­ing ADL CEO Jonathan Green­blatt and Britain’s Chief Rabbi.
• Israel’s Dias­po­ra Min­is­ter views Europe’s far-right par­ties as allies against Mus­lim fun­da­men­tal­ism, draw­ing crit­i­cism from Euro­pean countries.

An ear­li­er post on the con­fer­ence iden­ti­fied invi­tees who gen­er­al­ly could be described as rep­re­sent­ing var­i­ous nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive Euro­pean polit­i­cal parties:

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