'Trump, Le Pen have pro-Israel, anti-Muslim agenda'

Motivated by the UK’s Brexit vote and the victory of Donald Trump in the US 2016 presidential election, leader of French far-right National Front party Marine Le Pen has started her election campaign with a pledge to protect France from what she calls “Islamic fundamentalism,” globalization and the European Union. Press TV has asked two panelists about what the world would look like with far-right leaders in power in the US and France.

Journalist and political analyst from Paris, Gearoid O Colmain, believes that Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump have similar policies when it comes to demonizing Muslims and endorsing Israeli agenda in the Middle East.

Trump and Le Pen share an “Islamophobic agenda” and they are attempting to scapegoat immigrants for the failure of their respective states, Colmain said.

Elaborating on the reasons why both Le Pen and Trump approach the Muslim community with bias and aggression, Colmain said Le Pen and Trump are representatives of the Israeli anti-Muslim agenda in their countries. “She (Le Pen) is a Zionist. She appears to be very close to Israel and increasingly so, as is of course Trump.”

Le Pen herself and the vice president of her National Front party have close ties to Israel, he said, adding that “the French Jewish community is the ruling caste in France at this stage.”

The analyst warned that Le Pen is focusing on Muslims, while she should be focusing on the Tel Aviv regime’s policy which is to use the so-called war on terror to push forward its expansionist agenda in the region.

“If she cuts off support for Saudi Arabia and Qatar, it would damage the whole agenda of the war on terror, which is an Israeli project for global domination” and especially the American-Israeli hegemony in the Middle East, he argued.

Colmain said the French presidential candidate has supported xenophobic and anti-migrant policies which are in compliance with neither far-right nor far-left parties in France.

Meanwhile, John Mason, a professor of political science at William Peterson University from New York, said he sees “a parallel between Marine Le Pen’s appeal to former left-wing communist working class voters” and some policies that have been backed by the Trump administration.

According to Mason, right-wing leaders like Le Pen and Trump have common enemies; namely, foreign immigrants, people of color as well as non-Christians in both the United States and France.

“Le pen was into the right-wing populist mode. Whatever gesture she might make toward Muslim traditionalists, her basic policy is to restore dominance in France of French Catholic people,” he said.

The French politician is worried about the increasing population of Muslims and immigrants not only in France but also in Europe, the professor added.

Trump shares the same concerns about the percentage of foreign-born citizens in the United States, and therefore, his administration wants to expel citizens with green cards, Mason stated.

Commenting on Le Pen and Trump’s policy toward the Zionist regime, he argued that “there is no contradiction between being pro-Israeli and being anti-Semitic and that is true [both] in France and the United States.”

He opined that Le Pen stands no chance of becoming the president in 2017, but she may be elected in the next election in 2025.

Opinion polls suggest that Le Pen may win enough votes to reach the runoff in France’s presidential election in May, but she will lose to a mainstream candidate at that stage.

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