Anger over Israeli meeting with Marine Le Pen

LIBERAL Israelis yesterday voiced anger at a meeting in New York between the Israel’s UN ambassador Ron Prosor and Marine Le Pen, head of France’s far-right National Front party and daughter of its xenophobic founder Jean Marie Le Pen.

The meeting last week lasted about twenty minutes.

Mr Prosor posed for photos with Ms Le Pen, a presidential candidate who has been trying to turn the National Front into a more respectable party but still refuses to condemn the regime of Marshall Phillipe Petain and French fascism during the Second World War.

After their talk, Mr Prosor said: “We spoke about Europe and other matters and I very much enjoyed the discussion.”

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An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman yesterday said the meeting was “a mistake and something that shouldn’t have happened”. He said Israel’s policy remained to shun contact with the National Front “primarily because of its antisemitic history”.

Saniel Ben-Simonrom of the opposition Labour Party, said the meeting was “a slap in the face to the Jews of France, to French politics and to the sensitivity Israel must display on the matter of racist and xenophobic groups”.

Her father has said he did not know if Jews were gasssed by the Nazis and that the matter was “just a detail in the history of World War Two”.