Marine Le Pen, leader of the far right National Rally (RN) in France, lays a wreath at the monument to the Jewish victims of the Warsaw Ghetto. Photo: Attila Husejnow /SOPA Images/Reuters

i24 News – French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has set off a cacophony of criticism over her plans to attend a weekend march to protest rising antisemitism in France. Critics say that her once-pariah party has failed to shake off its antisemitic heritage despite growing political legitimacy.

France’s Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, numerous political parties and citizens are to attend the Sunday march called by the speakers of the country’s two houses of the parliament. Le Pen has said that she and her National Rally party also will be there, in what some see as an attempt to leverage the Israel-Hamas war to make herself more palatable to mainstream voters.

Party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, her father, was convicted repeatedly of antisemitic hate speech and played down the scope of the Holocaust. For one, back in 2016, he was fined €30,000 ($34,000) over denying the Holocaust while speaking to the French broadcaster BFMTV.

His daughter Marine — runner-up in the last two presidential elections and likely a top contender in 2027 — has worked to scrub the party’s image, kicking her father out and changing its name from National Front to National Rally.

Le Pen has recently criticized the amount of aid France provided to Gaza stating that: “France has spent millions on the water network in Gaza. I am for international cooperation but I also understand the anger of the Overseas France when they see that once again, they have come second in directing international aid!”

On a appris que la France avait dépensé des millions pour le réseau d'eau à Gaza. Je suis pour la coopération internationale mais comprenez la colère de nos compatriotes d'Outre-mer lorsqu'ils voient qu'une nouvelle fois, ils sont passés après l'aide internationale ! pic.twitter.com/TiaVFDYcDY

— Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) November 6, 2023

Meanwhile, the hard-left La FranceUnbowed Party (LFI) is said to boycott the march. However, the LFI MP Aurelie Trouve stated that “We will be present at all initiatives which combat all forms of racism, hatred, discrimination , but without the extreme right, it is a principle for us.”

The Socialist Party, the Communist Party and the Green European Party have all confirmed their participation in the “great civic march.”

The march comes as France finds itself among the countries where the number of antisemitic incidents has skyrocketed since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7. Earlier in October, Jewish homes in Paris were marked with Stars of David, while a teenager with a knife was arrested near the Strasbourg synagogue.