The Israel information centre CIDI in the Netherlands says it is concerned at the alliance between Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen, leader of the French nationalist party Front National.

CIDI director Esther Voet told television current affairs show Nieuwsuur Le Pen’s father has been ‘convicted three times for anti-semitism and trivialises the Holocaust’.

‘We’ve all seen the film in which he says the gas chambers were a detail in World War II. So I have few illustions about father Le Pen,’ she says.

Marine Le Pen has distanced herself from her father but he remains honorary chairman and is leading the Front National’s European election campaign. Wilders has always made support for Israel and Jews a central part of his anti-Islam campaign.

Risks

The alliance between the two parties has major consequences for Europe’s Jews, Voet said. ‘There is a risk that a larger group in the European parliament will now call for a ban on, say, ritual slaughter or oppose circumcision. Then you are hitting at the heart of being Jewish.’

According to the Telegraaf, Wilders accepts the fact that Le Pen senior will remain a Front National Europarliamentarian despite his convictions for anti-semitism.

The PVV is thought to get a large part of its financial support from Israel and Jewish groups in the US.

The Eurosceptic Dutch politician Geert Wilders and French National Front (FN) leader Marine Le Pen have launched what they call an “historic” alliance for next year’s European elections.

Mr Wilders said they had agreed on the need to repatriate from Brussels the power to control their countries’ borders and economies.

They held strategy talks in The Hague.

Both leaders say Europe’s political elite has been too tolerant of Islam and both want to curb immigration.

Ms Le Pen, a Euro MP, visited the Dutch parliament with Mr Wilders. His party lost almost half of its seats in the September 2012 Dutch election, but it is doing well now in opinion polls.

Eurosceptics are widely expected to make significant gains in the European elections in May, as debt-laden EU countries struggle to revive their anaemic economies.

“The time of patriotic movements being divided is over,” said Ms Le Pen, calling it “an historic day”.

“Today is the start of the liberation of Europe from the monster of Brussels,” said Mr Wilders, who heads the Freedom Party (PVV).

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