Europe 1 with AFP 2:49 p.m., February 14, 2022, modified at 2:51 p.m., February 14, 2022
After calling Eric Zemmour a "service Jew", EELV presidential candidate Yannick Jadot drove home the point by saying that the former journalist is "the useful idiot of anti-Semitism".
For the green candidate, "there is a whole part of the population who has found in Zemmour someone very practical to take on anti-Semitism".
Ecologist presidential candidate Yannick Jadot said Monday that "Zemmour is the useful idiot of anti-Semitism", the day after a statement in which he called him a "Jew on duty", an expression that triggered reactions on the right as on the left.
Zemmour, "someone very practical to take on anti-Semitism"
"There is a difference with Jean-Marie Le Pen, it is the most perverse: Zemmour is Jewish. He acts as a service Jew for anti-Semites," the MEP said on Radio J on Sunday.
Asked about this statement on Monday in the program "Grandes gueules" on RMC, he clarified: "Zemmour carries anti-Semitism, he condemns Dreyfus and rehabilitates Pétain (...). When it was Le Pen who made these remarks "There, it scandalized everyone. Zemmour uses religion to serve as an excuse for the far right, which was only waiting for such a representative to free speech".
Yannick Jadot insisted: "There is a whole part of the population who has found in Zemmour someone very practical to take on anti-Semitism, he is the useful idiot of anti-Semitism".
"Remove that comment"
Asked about the expression “Jew of service”, the first secretary of the PS Olivier Faure estimated Monday on France info that “the expression is not very happy”: “I do not believe that it is necessary to qualify people by what they are, we don't have to essentialize anyone".
President of the Republican Spring Amine El-Katmi tweeted: "I feel hurt deep inside when I am called a service Arab. I hate Zemmour but I can't bear to see him sent back to a 'service Jew' status. @yjadot, you're better than that. Take that down."
I feel hurt deep inside when people call me a service Arab.
I loathe Zemmour but I can't bear to see him returned to the status of “Jew on duty”.
@yjadot, you are better than that.
Remove this statement.
https://t.co/F7aUtiJw3o
— Amine El-Khatmi (@Aminelkhatmi) February 13, 2022
"It's shocking, it's shameful this resurgence of anti-Semitism on the far left, and we must condemn these remarks", denounced the unfortunate finalist of the primary of the right Eric Ciotti on BFMTV.