Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Anti-Semitism Amichai Chikli has come to French far-right leader Jordan Bardella’s defense following the publication of alleged messages that investigative website Mediapart attributes to the National Rally president when he was 17 and 18 years old.
By EJP team
Jordan Bardella on Tuesday categorically denied being the author, denouncing these messages as “crude forgeries.” He has filed a defamation lawsuit against Mediapart.
In a lengthy post published on X, Amichai Chikli called into question the outlet’s credibility in its coverage of the allegations against Jordan Bardella. He directly attacked Mediapart and its co-founder Edwy Plenel, who led it until 2024. The Israeli minister specifically references Plenel’s early writings in support of Black September, the Palestinian organization responsible for the hostage-taking at the 1972 Munich Olympics, during which eleven members of the Israeli team were killed.
Chikli also taook aim at Mediapart’s current president, Carine Fouteau, for her highly critical stance toward Israel and the way she characterized the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. The minister thus calls into question the outlet’s credibility in its coverage of the allegations against Jordan Bardella.
Chikli highlighted the National Rally president’s recent statements against Hamas and antisemitism. In particular, he recaleds Bardella’s visit to Israel last year, during which he went to the Nova Festival site and to communities near the Gaza Strip affected by the October 7 attack. He also highlighted Bardella’s speech during a conference in Jerusalem against antisemitism and his decision to cancel a speech in Washington after a gesture by Steve Bannon that Bardella deemed comparable to a Nazi salute.
For Amichai Chikli, the accusations against Jordan Bardella are part of a campaign to “destroy his reputation” led by a segment of the French left. “We have no confidence in those who spend their adult lives fighting the right of the small Jewish state to exist,” he wrote, before directly calling out those who, in his view, have in the past supported the perpetrators of the massacre of Israeli athletes in Munich.
Mediapart, for its part, claims to have verified the authenticity of the conversations attributed to Jordan Bardella following several months of investigation and says it is relying on dozens of written exchanges as well as witness accounts.
Bardella asserts that this is a ploy designed to destabilize Marine Le Pen’s presidential campaign and damage her reputation, as she is leading in the polls agead of next year election.