An official statement from The French Jewish Union for Peace:
“Supporters of Les Républicains have chosen a worrying figure to represent the party as the official candidate for President of the Republic. On November 25, François Fillon declared in a speech that ‘patriotism is the only way to transcend our origins, our races, our religions,’ (he expressed similar sentiments in 2013.)
Thus, we have a candidate for the ‘republican’ right who calmly speaks of “our races” after accusing Muslims, while simultaneously asking them to ‘defeat the fundamentalism within [their communities].’ This is the same candidate who this summer supported the racist and needless campaign against the burkini.
He has also expressed his intentions to foster a sense of equality among citizens by recalling how the Republic required the Church’s submission, ‘and how it was necessary to demand that Jews accept the laws of the Republic.’
When evoking the 1806 Sanhedrin established by Napolean to integrate Jews, he used the same vocabulary of submission and presented the Jews as outlaws and rebels, stating that it was necessary to ‘demand’ that they accept the laws of the Republic.
He also forgets that the principle of equality for Jews was often constructed against the institutions of the Republic, such as the Dreyfus Affair, and that political actors in the III Republic wallowed in anti-Semitic abjection under Vichy rule.
As such, the first official speech given by the Republican presidential candiate is one of division and stigmatization, and reminiscent of the Republic’s colonial history and post-colonial racism.”
The National Bureau of the French Jewish Union for Peace
Sources
http://oumma.com/224002/fillon-races-musulmans-juifs
