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Europe

French politicians in uproar after school principal resigns over hijab altercation

2024-03-31

[IsraelTimes] Gay Paree school head receives death threats after getting into a fight with a student who refused to remove her hijab as per French law

French politicians from across the spectrum expressed dismay on Wednesday over the resignation of a Gay Paree school principal who received death threats after asking a student to remove her Moslem veil while on the school premises.

In a show of support, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, a former education minister, was set to meet with the principal Wednesday, his office said.

Secularism and religion are hot-button issues in La Belle France, which is home to Europe’s largest Moslem community.

In 2004, authorities banned school children from wearing "signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation" such as headscarves, turbans, or kippas, on the basis of the country’s secular laws which are meant to guarantee neutrality in state institutions.

The headmaster’s departure comes at a time of deep tensions in the country following a series of incidents including the killing of a teacher by an Islamist former pupil last year.

The headmaster at the Maurice-Ravel lycee in eastern Gay Paree quit after receiving death threats online following an altercation with a student last month, officials told AFP on Tuesday.

In late February, he had asked three students to remove their hijabs on school premises, but one of them refused and an altercation ensued, according to prosecutors. He later received death threats online.

In a message addressed to the school’s staff, quoted by the French communist daily L’Humanite, the principal said that he had taken the decision to leave for his "safety and that of the school."

Education officials said he had taken "early retirement."

A ’COLLECTIVE FAILURE’
"It’s a disgrace," Bruno Retailleau, the head of the right-wing Republicans faction in the Senate upper house, said on X on Wednesday.

Boris Vallaud, the head of the Socialist deputies in the National Assembly lower house, told television broadcaster La Belle France 2 that the incident was "a collective failure."

Marion Marechal, the granddaughter of far-right patriarch Jean-Marie Le Pen and a far-right politician herself, spoke on Sud Radio of a "defeat of the state" in the face of "the Islamist gangrene."

Maud Bregeon, a politician with President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, also took aim at "an Islamist movement."

"Authority lies with school heads and teachers, and we have a duty to support this educational community," Bregeon said.

Socialist Gay Paree mayor Anne Hidalgo called the principal to "assure him of her total support and solidarity," said her office, adding that she was "appalled and dismayed."

The student lodged a complaint against the principal, accusing him of mistreating her during the incident. She told the French daily, Le Gay Pareeien, that she had been "hit hard on the arm" by the principal.

The student is an adult who was at the school for vocational training.

The Gay Paree public prosecutor’s office told AFP on Wednesday that the student’s complaint had been dismissed.

CYBER-HARASSMENT PROBE
At the same time, an investigation was opened into cyber-harassment following the death threats against the headmaster.

In a further show of support, the education ministry said that it would "never" abandon teachers in the face of "threats." The ministry said that "all teams" remained mobilized, adding that the principal’s decision to leave his post was "understandable, given the seriousness of the attacks against him."

Education Minister Nicole Belloubet visited the school in early March and deplored the "unacceptable attacks."

A 26-year-old man has been arrested for making death threats against the principal on the internet. He is due to stand trial in April.

The uproar comes as dozens of French schools have received threats in recent weeks.

Attal has pledged to "hunt down" the people responsible for sending them.

Around 50 schools in Gay Paree received new bomb threats on Wednesday, some including a "very ~~violent~~ mostly peaceful video," education authorities said. The mayor’s office said classes were briefly interrupted for security checks.

The prime minister pledged to increase security, including near schools, after the Islamic State

...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
jihadist group grabbed credit for the killing of 137 people at a Moscow concert on Friday.

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Europe

Germany’s AfD sets up talks with France’s Le Pen to clarify immigrant expulsion spat

2024-01-31

[IsraelTimes] Party chief wants to ’set record straight’ with European partner after members accused of discussing mass deportations, prompting criticism from Le Pen.

Germany’s far-right AfD party said Monday that it had arranged talks with French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, given a rift over alleged debates on the mass expulsion of im~~migrants~~ colonists.

Members of Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is riding high in opinion polls, were accused in a recent press investigation of discussing the idea of mass deportations at a meeting with bad boys.

Le Pen last week distanced herself from the idea, saying she was "in complete disagreement with the proposal that was apparently discussed" at the meeting.

Her party’s deputies belong to the same European Parliament group as the AfD, an arrangement Le Pen said was now up for discussion.

AfD parliamentary group chief Bernd Baumann told journalists that talks had been arranged with Le Pen to "set the record straight on how things really are," without providing details of when the talks would be held.

A front man for Maximilian Krah, an AfD member of the European Parliament, told AFP that "we consider this to be a misunderstanding... which we hope to clarify soon."

According to the investigative media outlet Correctiv, AfD members discussed the expulsion of im~~migrants~~ colonists and "non-assimilated citizens" at a recent meeting in Potsdam.

Among the participants at the talks was Martin Sellner, a leader of Austria’s Identitarian Movement and a champion of so-called "remigration."

The reported plans have led to a backlash against the AfD in Germany, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets to protest against the party.

Around 576,000 people took part in protests last weekend alone, an interior ministry spokeswoman said Monday.

Le Pen, parliamentary leader of La Belle France’s National Rally (RN), has been trying to soften her party’s image since taking over from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who is notorious for xenophobic and antisemitic remarks.

"We are going to have to talk about divergences if they are as large as this one," she told journalists.

Baumann said Le Pen’s comments had been "based on press reports" that were "completely wrong in their tone."

Terms such as "deportation" and "mass expulsion" had not been used at the meeting, he said, but were "attributions on the part of this dubious Correctiv organization and large sections of the press."

Sellner confirmed that he presented his "Identitarian concept of remigration" at the talks.

The "concept targeted ~~migrants~~ colonists who are not assimilated, or who culturally, economically and criminally weigh on society," he told AFP.

The AfD said Roland Hartwig, who is an aide of co-leader Alice Weidel, had presented a social media project at the meeting, but denied adopting Sellner’s ideas.

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Europe

Le Pen accused of misusing EU funds

2023-09-24

She is regularly accused of things, mostly to keep her off the ballot for the next election, or to make her less attractive to center-right French voters.

[RT] French prosecutors have recommended putting conservative ex-presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and 26 other National Rally (RN) party members on trial over alleged embezzlement of EU funds.

The prosecutors allege that, between 2004 to 2016, money allocated to cover the expenses of European Parliament members was used to pay for assistants who, in reality, worked for RN, known until 2018 as National Front (FN).

Le Pen’s father and party co-founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was also implicated in the scheme. Overall, 11 MEPs, 12 parliamentary assistants and four other staffers were referred to trial.

If convicted, Le Pen could face up to 10 years in prison and a ban on holding public office for the same period, according to AFP.

See?

The European Anti-Fraud Office reported in 2016 that Le Pen owed €339,000 ($361,000). According to her lawyer, Rodolphe Bosselut, the politician paid back almost €330,000 in July. The payment, however, "does not in any way constitute explicit or implicit recognition of the European Parliament's claims," Bosselut said, as quoted by AFP.

Le Pen has denied any wrongdoing, arguing that the allegations against her were politically motivated.

No doubt.

The party released a statement on Friday, saying that the accusations stemmed from "an erroneous understanding of the work of opposition lawmakers and their assistants."

Le Pen came second during presidential elections in 2017 and 2022, losing to Emmanuel Macron. She stepped down as party president last year, but continues to lead the RN group in the French National Assembly.
We don't call them EUSSR for nothing.

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Europe

~~Far-right~~ Nationalist French politician would best Macron in first round of elections – poll

2020-10-09

[IsraelTimes] Survey shows ultranationalist Marine Le Pen would overtake president in preliminary vote, but Macron would come out on top in subsequent runoff.

A new poll of French voters suggests that Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally Party, is growing in popularity since the 2017 elections.

If La Belle France’s 2022 presidential elections were held now, Le Pen would beat President Emmanuel Macron and all other rivals in the first round. But in a subsequent runoff of the top two candidates, Macron would still win handily, as he did in 2017.

In the poll of 1,805 French voters published Sunday in Le Journal du Dimanche, Le Pen received between 24% and 27% of the vote, depending on who she would theoretically face. Macron, the runner-up, had 23% to 26%. The poll has a 1.8% margin of error.

French Jews, whose community of about 500,000 people is Europe’s largest, are largely wary of Le Pen, who has said she would ban the wearing of kippot in public so that she could impose a ban on wearing traditional Moslem garb without violating constitutional requirements on equality.

However,
alcohol has never solved anybody's problems. But then, neither has milk...
her strong stance against political and murderous Moslem Islam, as well as her rebuke of members of her party caught making anti-Semitic statements, have earned her a growing following among some French Jews. Polls from 2017 suggested that some 10% of French Jewish voters vote Le Pen, and possibly as many as 16%.

Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, is a Holocaust denier with multiple convictions for inciting hate speech. Marine kicked him out of the party in 2015 for making an anti-Semitic joke about the Holocaust.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Secretary of French far-right party holds meetings in Israel

2017-01-27

Nicolas Bay

...secretary of Marine le Pen's National Front party...

on ‘private visit’ to gain support for France’s upcoming elections meets with political, military, figures, though Israel shuns the party.

It's been absolutely fascinating watching how their local Jewish communities and Israel have suddenly become terribly important to right wing populist parties, even as Jew hatred blossoms on the left. Geert Wilder started it, I suppose, but the pilgrimages that have been made to Israel and the attempts at rapprochement with Jewish communities at home as the next round of elections approach in Europe has been wonderfully confusing for most involved. Even the alt-right in America, accused so loudly of antisemitism, apparently splits between those who deeply admire Israel and those spewing the kind of vicious nonsense that would have made Hitler very happy indeed.

Israel has no official ties to the National Front because of its far-right ideology and history of anti-Semitism. The party’s leader Marine Le Pen is a leading French presidential candidate in the April and May election.

Emmanuel Nahshon of Israel’s Foreign Ministry says Nicolas Bay was on a private visit and would not meet Israeli officials.

But Bay tweeted photos of his meetings with Israeli Health Ministry’s deputy director general, an Israeli medical commander, a leading member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, the leader of the party’s youth organization, and other civil society leaders. Bay’s photo of meeting with an army colonel and the Health Ministry official later disappeared from Bay’s Twitter.

Israel’s Haaretz daily reported that Bay was visiting to meet French citizens living in Israel and shore up French Jewish support, and to meet Israeli politicians.

His meetings come as members of other far-right parties in Europe have paid visits to Israel and sought to forge ties with the Jewish state.

"The meeting with Mr. Bay was unofficial and took place by coincidence," said David Shayan, head of the Likud party’s youth group. "Likud Youth has no interest in involvement with the political process and elections in La Belle France." He declined to say what was discussed in the meeting.

The Health Ministry and the Israeli army had no immediate comment.

Since Marine Le Pen, a leading presidential candidate, took over the leadership in 2011, she has worked to scrub away the anti-Semitic image inherited from the long reign of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a party co-founder convicted of racism and anti-Semitism. She had her father expelled as a party member, though a court ruled he remains honorary president for life.

The National Front had no comment on Bay’s visit to Israel.

Johann Habib, front man of the Israeli Frenchie-loving Federation, called the visit "shocking" and "a provocation."

"This party does not share our values of democracy and equality and tolerance," Habib said. "The party is anti-Semitic." He questioned why Israel allowed him into the country.

Two weeks ago, Marine Le Pen made her own surprise visit, this one to Trump Tower in New York. She did not meet with anyone in the Trump team, but George Lombardi, a Trump Tower resident and co-founder of Citizens for Trump, said he held a gathering for her with a group of entrepreneurs, industrialists and diplomats.

Link

Europe

Femen gatecrash National Front rally in central Paris

2016-05-02

[FRANCE24] Topless Femen activists on Sunday interrupted the French far-right National Front’s (FN) annual May Day gathering for the second year running, baring their chests and toasting "The end of the FN" before being tossed in the slammer
Book 'im, Mahmoud!
At midday, the Femen hard boys, topless and clutching bottles of champagne, burst from a red van parked outside the party's headquarters at Porte de la Villette in northern Gay Paree.

Their torsos were daubed with slogans including "Fascists stay in the shadows" and "Long live the end of the FN".

Their protest was short lived as riot police controlling the gathering moved quickly to arrest them with the enthusiastic help of FN security guards.

Bystanders shouted "Put them under the wheels of your truck" and "Don’t be gentle with them".

The official FN gathering this year, dubbed a "patriotic banquet", took place earlier in the day at Saint Augustin in central Gay Paree, in a break from tradition that usually sees far-right supporters march from another statue of Joan of Arc on Rue de Rivoli, next to the Louvre Museum, to nearby Opéra.

However,
a lie repeated often enough remains a lie...
bitter infighting that saw FN leader Marine Le Pen oust her father Jean-Marie last year meant there were two different rallies at two different Joans and more airing of the family feud.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, 87, kicked out of the party for refusing to tone down racist and anti-Semitic comments, held court at the traditional spot in front of about 400 supporters where he woefully predicted a loss for the FN in next year's presidential elections.

Earlier, Femen posted a picture on Twitter of its topless ~~bandidos~~ holy warriors mopping the ground outside Opéra, under the slogan: "We are proud to clean our democratic and secular streets of Marine Le Pen’s dirty hatred".

Femen activists also gatecrashed the chaotic May 1 demonstration in 2015, when Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was not invited to speak, took to the podium in open defiance of his daughter.

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Europe

Le Pen cleared of charges linked to anti-Muslim remarks

2015-12-16

[ARABNEWS] Marine Le Pen, the leader of La Belle France's far-right National Front (FN), was acquitted Tuesday of inciting hatred after likening Muslim street prayers to the Nazi occupation.

Magistrates in the southeast city of Lyon found the 47-year-old not guilty of "inciting discrimination, violence or hatred toward a group of people based on their religious beliefs" over her comments on the campaign trail in December 2010.

Le Pen, who was not in court, faced one year in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros ($49,000) if convicted.

The ruling came after the FN scored a record number of votes in regional elections on Sunday.

Although the anti-immigration party did not win control of any regions, its strong showing in the first round of voting panicked mainstream parties, forcing them to band together to strip votes from the FN in the second round.

The party recorded its best-ever electoral score with 6.8 million votes, prompting Le Pen to crow: "Nothing can stop us now."

Le Pen had accused the government of being behind the five-year-old charges that saw her brought to trial just weeks before the regional poll. She took over the party from her rabble-rousing father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2011 and has worked hard to improve its image, but it remains staunchly nationalistic, and Marine Le Pen has said migration into Europe recalls the "barbarian invasions" of the fourth century.

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Europe

A far-right, pro-Israel France? Expert says this is where all of Europe is heading

2015-12-10

[Jpost] The far-right National Front party made huge gains in French regional elections and could be a sign of a more pro-Israel Europe.

La Belle France went to the polls on Sunday in regional elections and the far-right National Front party, formerly known for its anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant stances but now known for its support of Israel and opposition to radical Islam, came out as a winner across the country.

The regional election outcomes are taken seriously since they are thought to be a bellweather for what will come when La Belle France votes in the 2017 national elections.

Though some have pinned the party's success on its occurrence so soon after the November 13 terror attacks in Gay Paree, one Israeli expert told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that La Belle France has been moving to the right for years and is part of an overall trend in Europe of far-right parties becoming the mainstream.

Dr. Esther Lopatin, director of the European Studies program at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, said that Europeans are frustrated by leaders who have ignored their concerns about rapid immigration and radical Islam on the continent.

So while National Front leader Marine Le Pen has gone to great lengths to show that her party is no longer anti-Semitic (even to the point of saying she is a Zionist and kicking out the party's founder, her own father, Jean-Marie Le Pen), Lopatin was careful to note that the party's fairly-recent rejection of anti-Semitism has not come from a sudden love of Jews, but rather from a realization that they share with the Jewish community a common enemy in radical Islam.

Lopatin said that other far-right parties in other parts of Europe that used to view the Jews as an enemy are now some of the most supportive of Israel as well.

"It's like they all of a sudden had the realization that the Jews are not really our enemies," Lopatin said of similar trends in other parts of the continent. "[Jews] contribute to society, they don't want to destroy our society or impose Shari'a law on our society. More and more people believe that."

"Europe is going through a makeover," she said, noting that overall voters are moving to the right politically because "the public is not happy." The voters for far-right parties, Lopatin said, used to be only racists but now include the average French voter "the type that would have voted for [former French president Nicolas] Sarkozy"

"They have the feeling that they have been deserted by the leadership who didn't take their concerns [about immigration and radical Islam] seriously," she said.

Regarding the sudden support for Israel, Lapotin said that "[Le Pen] understands that people would have voted for her if not for her father."

"Every time she has to vote regarding Israel, she usually votes in support ... and we saw that with the labels." Le Pen was among the minority that voted against the European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
's Israeli settlement labeling policy.

Another factor contributing to the rise of the far-right is that the parties are becoming more sophisticated, Lopatin said. Wheras the senior Le Pen was an outright racist with unrealistic platforms, Lopatin described Marie Le Pen as being more diplomatic, realistic and reserved.

Given all this, why is the European Union still so harsh on Israel if it is moving to the right?

According to Lopatin, "it takes time to abandon a central mantra that the Europeans have believed for many many years ... that the Israeli-Paleostinian conflict is a problem and if this is solved, then we will live in a better world."

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Europe

France's Far-Right National Front Expels Founder Jean-Marie Le Pen

2015-08-21

[NBCNEWS] La Belle France's far-right National Front expelled founder Jean-Marie Le Pen on Thursday in a bid to shed the party's anti-Semitic reputation and bolster his daughter Marine's prospects in a presidential election bid.

The decision to sideline the 87-year-old Le Pen was taken by the Front's executive committee after several hours of discussions with him.

"At the end of the meeting held today, the executive committee of the Front National...deliberated and decided, by the required majority, to exclude M. Jean Marie Le Pen as a member," the party said in a statement.

The expulsion followed several earlier attempts to remove him.

Marine Le Pen, who took over the party leadership from her father in 2011, has been trying to rid the party of its anti-Semitic image and position it as an anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic force offering protectionist economic policies.

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Europe

Political Earthquake in France as Far Right Triumphs in EU Vote

2014-05-26

[An Nahar] La Belle France suffered a political earthquake on Sunday as the far-right National Front topped the polls in European elections with an unprecedented haul of one in every four votes cast, exit polls indicated.

Average results from five polling institutes pointed to the anti-immigration, anti-EU party led by Marine Le Pen taking 24-25 percent of the popular vote and around a third, or 23-25, of La Belle France's 74 seats in the European Parliament.

The mainstream right Union for a Popular Movement was beaten into second place with a projected 20-21 percent score and the ruling Socialist Party was left languishing in third place with just 14-15 percent.

The result is the highest score ever obtained in a nationwide election by the FN and follows breakthrough gains made by the once pariah party in municipal elections earlier in the year.

"It is a historic score. We are now the first party in La Belle France," FN vice-president Florian Philippot declared as the exit polls were published while senior Socialist minister Segolene Royal acknowledged that the far right's success represented "a shock on a global scale."

Le Pen, who has been credited with significantly broadening the appeal of a party founded by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, said voters had demonstrated their desire to "reclaim the reins of their own destiny."

"Our people demand only one type of politics - a politics of the French, for the French and with the French."

"They have said they no longer want to be ruled from outside, to have to submit to laws they did not vote for or to obey (EU) commissioners who are not subject to the legitimacy of universal suffrage."

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Europe

Le Pen Stripped of Immunity

2013-07-02

European lawmakers stripped French National Front leader Marine Le Pen of her parliamentary immunity Tuesday, paving the way for the far-right leader to face a probe over alleged anti-Muslim comments.

The vote at the European Parliament in Strasbourg was by a show of hands with a clear majority in favor. It confirmed a decision by the Parliament's legal affairs committee last month to recommend lifting her immunity.

Ms. Le Pen, who has been a European lawmaker since 2004, was in parliament for the vote. Her father, former National Front leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen also attended.

Ms. Le Pen finished third in last year's French presidential election, scoring the highest percentage of the vote the National Front has ever received in the first round of the vote.

After parliament's decision on Tuesday, the National Front said in a statement that the lawmakers decision "reflects the terrible anxiety of an elite against a responsible politician who has the courage to tell the truth to her compatriots."

In a television interview after the vote Ms. Le Pen said she stood by her comments. "I take responsibility for them and I will go and defend them before the court," she said.

The lawmaker who sponsored the vote, Swedish member of parliament Cecilia Wikström from the Liberal ALDE group, welcomed the result.

"I am pleased that the European Parliament with a wide majority chose to follow my recommendation, namely to waive the immunity of Marine Le Pen. Now it's up to the French judiciary to try her case," Ms. Wikström said.

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Europe

Hollande Blames Europe's Austerity-Only Plan for Le Pen's Rise

2012-04-24

[Bloomberg] Francois Hollande, the winner of the first round of La Belle France's elections, said Europe's austerity drive fueled despair and created conditions for the record-high score for anti-euro National Front leader Marine Le Pen.
It couldn't have anything to do with continuous assaults against European culture by large numbers of North African colonists...
Le Pen, the leader of the nationalist, anti-immigrant party, won 17.9 percent, or 6.4 million votes, surpassing poll estimates with the highest tally for the National Front created by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1972. Hollande, the Socialist candidate, got 28.6 percent in the April 22 ballot, leaving him to face President Nicolas Sarkozy
...23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. Sarkozy is married to singer-songwriter Carla Bruni, who has a really nice birthday suit...
in next month's runoff. Sarkozy won 27.2 percent.

"It's this austerity everywhere that brings desperation to people and leads them to vote for the far-right," Hollande said yesterday in a speech in Quimper, in Brittany, where the National Front almost doubled its score from 2007.

Europe's front against austerity has expanded in recent weeks after Spain struggled to meet European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
-imposed deficit targets, election campaigns in Greece faced anti- austerity rumblings and a revolt against extra spending cuts in the traditionally budget-conscious Netherlands propelled Prime Minister Mark Rutte's coalition toward an early breakup.

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