[CTRL] Tens Of Thousands Of Patriotic Jews Voted for Le Pen Masonic Jews Denounce Them

[William Shannon]

http://www.overthrow.com/lsn/news.asp?fileName=lsn20020426081814.html Tens Of Thousands Of Patriotic Jews Voted for Le Pen Masonic Jews Denounce Them As A "Small Minority" 4/26/02 8:18:14 AM London Guardian London, England -- Holocaust survivor shocks fellow Jews by voting for the National Front leader Jon Henley in Paris Friday April 26, 2002 The Guardian Jo Goldenberg lost both parents and all his sisters in Auschwitz, and survived the Nazi occupation of Paris and a terrorist bomb attack on his celebrated kosher restaurant in the Marais district. He knows about anti-semitism. And on Sunday he voted for Jean-Marie Le Pen. Mr Goldenberg, 79, said Mr Le Pen "represented above all the defence of France, a sense of patriotism, a desire to restore order - that's what counts for me". The far-right leader, he added, "may have said some shocking things a few years ago, but he's changed". He is the most prominent example of a strange phenomenon: the thousands, possibly even tens of thousands, of Jews who, despite Mr Le Pen's infamous remark that the Nazi gas chambers were "a detail of history", helped propel him into the second round of presidential election, against Jacques Chirac. "He's representative of a minority, a sad and mistaken but we think quite sizeable minority, who decided to vote for Mr Le Pen because they are tired and frightened by the mounting level of anti-Jewish tension and violence in this country," Michel Zaoui, a lawyer and leading member of CRIF, the Jewish umbrella organisation, said yesterday. In the three weeks leading up to Sunday's first-round presidential vote, as Arab-Israeli bloodshed increased in the Middle East, the police recorded 395 attacks on Jewish targets in France, ranging from verbal insults and graffiti to physical assaults and arson. Big potential targets, such as city synagogues, are still under round-the-clock police guard. "I could never vote Le Pen, but I do understand the Jews who did. Le Pen was the first to promise a crackdown on violence and strict controls on immigrants, and that's all they want to hear," said Sammy, who runs a jewellery shop near the Rue des Rosiers, where Mr Goldenberg's popular restaurant was blown up in 1982. "They forget the things he's said, the anti-semitic jokes he cracks, the Nazi- inspired slogans, the gas chambers being a detail of history, all that. They see his new acceptable face now, and they want an undisturbed life. It's a reaction I deplore, but can easily understand." Six people died and 22 were wounded in the bomb attack in the Rue des Rosiers. It was blamed on the terrorist Abu Nidal but no one has ever been arrested for it. After the attack the restaurant became a gathering place for Holocaust survivors and resistance heroes, the bombing regularly commemorated with flowers, bittersweet Yiddish music and prayers. Its new owner, Max Grinberg, angrily rejected his predecessor's views. "His words are the ramblings of a 79-year-old man who has forgotten what he himself has lived through and how much his family has suffered at the hands of people who think like Mr Le Pen." The CRIF has urged France's 600,000 Jews not to abstain but to vote for Mr Chirac on May 5, to head off the candidate of "racism, xenophobia and anti- semitism". Not all will follow its advice.