PARIS (EJP)--- Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the French extreme-right National Front party, has declared that he is not an anti-Semite.
In an interview with the weekly magazine Paris Match, Le Pen said: “From an opinion on a specific topic one cannot conclude that the National Front or myself are anti-Semites”.
He added:“I think that there are a certain number of people who think that we are anti-Semites when one is not unconditional on the proposals defended either by Israel or by CRIF”.
CRIF is the umbrella group for Jewish secular organizations in France.
“I am not an anti-Semite. There are Jews in our party, even in its governing body. I am not racist. That our opponents have interest in spreading the rumour comes from the fact that anti-racism today has become a religion. Those who are not the faithful or the clerics are being point out,” Le Pen said.
“Freedom of thought is today framed and even penally sanctioned,” he deplored.
Past comments
Le Pen was convicted and fined in 1990 for inciting racial hatred and for saying in 1996 that the gas chambers used by the Nazis were "merely a detail" of WWII.
He faces another this year for saying in 2005 that "the German occupation was not particularly inhumane".
Last June, during the football World Cup, he said the French team had too many black players.
In the interview with Paris Match, ahead of a presidential election next April, Le Pen also denied that he was an extremist. “I am a man from the centre-right. It is not me who turned to the extreme-right but rather the French political corps which tended to the left.
According to political observers in Paris, Le Pen has been trying to soften his image to attract new voters at the election.
The 78-year old politician appears to have cut down on xenophobic rhetoric in recent weeks.
This was seen as part of a drive led by his daughter, Marine Le Pen, to attract voters.
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Le Pen, who has been trying to soften his image to attract new voters, said he believed anti-Semitism could be funny. In December, he attended a show by controversial comedian Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala. The black comic was fined by a French court for anti-Semitic comments in 2004.
Asked on BFM radio whether it was Dieudonne's anti-Semitism that he found funny, Le Pen responded: "Yes, that can also be funny. "There should be no subject that escapes criticism or irony. It all depends on how it is treated," Le Pen added.
"You know the people who mock Jews the most are Jews themselves. There's a Jewish form of humor that is very famous and well-known."
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Increase in support
Recent polls have shown increased support for the National Front, a sign that the effort may be working, although he is lagging behind Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal and the likely candidate from the governing conservative Union for a Popular Movement or UMP party, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
A poll published on Sunday in the daily Le Monde newspaper shows Royal edging Sarkozy with 34 percent of the respondents saying they would support her against 32 percent for her main rival. Jean-Marie Le Pen is third with 15 percent.
The national Front leader received 16.9 percent of votes in the 2002 presidential election and finished second behind President Jacques Chirac .
A candidate in every presidential election since 1974, Le Pen is hoping to exploit divisions in the centre-right – just as he exploited fractures on the left in 2002 – to qualify for a place in a run-off against Ségolène Royal on May 6.
