French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen said that B’nai B’rith had signed a “pact” with other politicians to keep him out of the government.
“The leaders of the soft right signed a pact in which they vowed never to unite with Front National,” Le Pen, who founded the National Front party 40 years ago, said this week in an interview for the weekly Minute.
“It is said that it was B’nai B’rith, a sort of Jewish Freemasonry group, that imposed this clause,” Le Pen related.
Le Pen, who is the honorary president of the National Front, now headed by his daughter, Marine Le Pen, added that former French President Jacques Chirac of the center-right UMP party signed the pact.
“Furthermore, I think that certain representatives of the RPR took pride in that pact, which was notably signed by the abominable Chirac,” said Le Pen, 84.
Founded in 1976, RPR dissolved into UMP in 2002.
On its website, B’nai B’rith International says it is the Global Voice of the Jewish Community, the most widely known Jewish humanitarian, human rights, and advocacy organization. B’nai B’rith works for Jewish unity, security, and continuity and fights anti-Semitism and intolerance around the world since 1843.
The president of B’nai B’rith France denied the existence of any pact involving B’nai B’rith and Front National.
Dr. Richard Prasquier, president of CRIF, the umbrella group representing French Jewish communities, called Le Pen’s theory the result of “senility or obsessive anti-Semitism, and probably of both.”
In a statement posted on the CRIF website, Prasquier added that “The tendency to see conspiracies is a characteristic of anti-Semites and unfortunately this is the case with Mr. Le Pen.”
He also called on Marine Le Pen to remove her father as honorary president of the party, currently the third largest in France.