[ #UseYourVote ] As Macron Committed Recognize Palestine 'at Best Timing', What About [New] His Nemesis, 28-Year-Old Jordan Bardella [*We Obtained Leak Docs Israel's Exit Strategy]

France has a taste for revolutions, and in the 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, it has found a mild-mannered, impeccably dressed insurgent who vows to upend the politics of the country in order to save it from “disappearance.”

Mr. Bardella, the president of the National Rally, is the cherished disciple of Marine Le Pen, 55, the perennial far-right presidential candidate. She once called him the “lion cub”; now she calls him “the lion.” A clean-cut, strong-jawed TikTok star, known for his love of candy, he has certainly shown a sure hand in the French political jungle.

As European Parliament elections approach on Sunday, Mr. Bardella, who led his party’s campaign, seems poised for a victory that could reshape French politics. Officials hope for strong youth turnout but experts say this does not translate into support for EU as far right makes inroads. But tension rocketed, spread across the EU members. Incident of violence against a politician in Europe. A man has been arrested after attacking Denmark’s prime minister Mette Frederiksen in central Copenhagen [10 hours ago], for example.

An Ipsos poll published this past week gave the National Rally some 33 percent of the vote, more than double the 16 percent of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Renaissance party. Endangered Macron and his political party, [also] just days before G7 Summit in Borgo Egnazia, Apulia, Italy, as PM Giorgia Meloni Chair G7 this year, with [the highest topic] will be Israel - Palestine / Gaza War including [potential] exit strategy for Israel. No longer too focused about Ukraine - Russia.

Everyone agrees that Jordan Bardella has an undeniable talent: he speaks. He doesn’t belch, stammer, or babble. He demonstrates, exposes, if necessary, stuns the opponent with a well-felt punchline. She will spin on social networks, expand the fan club.

At the National Rally (RN), the list of cathodic victims of the MEP is recited by heart, as if their scalps were decorating the headquarters in rue Michel-Ange (16^e arrondissement of Paris): the ministers Gabriel Attal and Bruno Le Maire, the European deputy Nathalie Loiseau, the “rebellious” deputy Clémentine Autain.

In 2013, Jordan Bardella showed up every Wednesday at the Forum, an anonymous apartment on 13^e district of the capital, where young Ile-de-France frontists are trained in activism. François Paradol, who became his chief of staff, remembers a tall guy sitting at the back, “quite discreet, who took notes”. Something, all the same, sets him apart: the teenager from Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) is dressed to the nines.

“We felt someone in full maturation, also in search. He was discovering a completely unknown world., recalls Mathilde Androuët, MEP, at the time co-president of the National Youth Front. The first to give him the short ladder. His thing? “He spoke well, was rather pleasant. And it hit well up there. »

Eleven years have passed. Jordan Bardella navigated between the different circles of influence around Marine Le Pen, with the mastery of an ocean liner captain in a field of icebergs. Propelled by Florian Philippot, then number two in the party, he approached, from the start of his disgrace, former members of the Union Defense Group (GUD), around Frédéric Chatillon, close friends of Marine Le Pen and RN service providers. Then, when the political and financial scandals made them less frequent, the child prodigy placed himself under the leadership of the most listened to adviser – and brother-in-law – of Marine Le Pen, Philippe Olivier. Anecdote: in these three circles, the young man always found love, with a militant Philippotist, with the daughter of Mr. Chatillon, then with that of Mr. Olivier.

Even if the effective power of the European Union’s only directly elected body is limited, this would be a stark repudiation of the French leader. As elsewhere in Europe, the normalization of the far right and complicated discourse Israel - Palestine has proceeded apace.

It is as if a fractured France, weary of politics as usual and anxious about its future, has abruptly discovered a more acceptable version of the xenophobic politics that long cast the National Rally as a direct threat to French democracy. It has helped that Mr. Bardella is young, possesses a reassuring showmanship and does not bear the name Le Pen.

Indeed, his success has been such that a leadership battle looms. For now, Ms. Le Pen and her prodigal son are a hugging and seemingly harmonious duo (Mr. Bardella dates Ms. Le Pen’s niece Nolwenn Olivier). But Mr. Bardella’s popularity is such that there is a possibility the wunderkind will eclipse his maker.

Ms. Le Pen retains the stubborn hope of becoming president in 2027, when Mr. Macron’s term ends. She has said she would make Mr. Bardella her prime minister if she became president.

The chance of President Macron [maybe] recognize Palestine unexpectedly very huge after quake between Far-Right movement in Europe, after shocked news 2 weeks ago, Marine Le Pen says her party end cooperation with the Alternative for Germany party, saying it 'has no leadership and is under the sway of radical groups'.

Shocked news by Marine Le Pen just after big rallies of [club] far-right movement in Europe, as Marine Le Pen, Hungarian Viktor Orban, and leader CHEGA [ENOUGH] Prtuguese far-right movement André Claro Amaral Ventura. [Club] Far-Right movement in Europe has a solid support to Israel, as Hungarian Viktor Orban himself angry about ICC warrant to Netanyahu and Gallant. Hungary Orban has a long, very long weird decision history, as Orban is also angry about ICC warrant to Putin. Hungary is an ICC member, but Orban said Hungary never wanted to confront Russia... we are trying to save everything that is possible from our bilateral contacts."

After shocked decision by Marine Le-Pen, the lead candidate for Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the European parliamentary election has resigned from the German far-right party’s leadership, as growing divisions between Europe’s nationalist parties threaten to undermine their expected gains in next month’s ballot.

Maximilian Krah, who last weekend told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that the SS, the Nazis’ main paramilitary force, were “not all criminals”, said in a statement on Wednesday that his comments were “being misused as a pretext to damage our party”.

His SS remark, the latest in a series of controversies involving Krah and AfD, this week prompted France’s far-right National Rally (RN) to say it would no longer sit in the same European parliamentary group as the German party after the June elections.

*long, long time [former] Queen of Europe de facto, [former] Chancellor Angela Merkel is really healthy after ended her tenure and replace by SPD Olaf Scholz. By Maltese Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament since January 2022.

The two parties currently dominate the European parliament’s radical right Identity and Democracy (ID) group, which also includes Matteo Salvini’s League in Italy, Austria’s Freedom party (FPÖ), Geert Wilders’ Freedom party (PVV) in the Netherlands and Vlaams Belang in Belgium.

The group’s members – many of which are still viewed as extreme in their national contexts – are on course to become the biggest winners of the European elections, with polls predicting their total seat tally could rise from 59 MEPs to about 85.

The national-conservative European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, which includes Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS), Spain’s Vox, the Finns and the Sweden Democrats, is also expected to advance, to about 75 seats.

However, a major shake-up of the parliament’s rightwing and far-right groups now appears inevitable, with the formation of one or more new groups possible and little certainty as to how – or indeed whether – they will be able to work together.

AfD has shot up the polls to become Germany’s second most popular party this year, but its support has recently dropped by several percentage points amid intense scrutiny of its policies and the conduct of some of its leaders, including Krah.

The party faced mass street protests earlier this year after senior figures attended a meeting where the deportation of Germans with immigrant backgrounds was discussed, and over allegations that it harbours agents for Russia and China.

Ketsia Djoho Nena, 18, says she is looking forward to voting on European Election [in France: Europeenness]. She is thinking hard and hasn’t made up her mind. “There is a really lot of choice … I have to make a good choice because my vote could change something, so I cannot take it lightly,” she says.

Across the continent, millions more young people will vote for the first time: 5.1 million in Germany, 4 million in France and 2.8 million in Italy, according to the EU statistics agency Eurostat. While no one can give a precise total of youth voters, if first-time voters were a bloc they would be larger than most EU countries. And that is not to be sniffed at.

In 2019 an increase in voting among young people helped drive overall turnout to a 25-year high of 50.6%. Despite EU satisfaction with the 2019 turnout, younger voters were still less likely to vote than their parents and grandparents: only 42% of voters up to the age 24 reported voting in 2019, versus 54% of the 55+ group, according to a European parliament survey.

EU officials are hoping for a strong turnout, knowing that people who go to the polls in early adulthood are more likely to develop a lifelong voting habit. The European parliament’s campaign video – a heart-wrenching montage of older people sharing memories of the second world war and the Holocaust, the crushing of the Prague spring and the fall of the Berlin Wall with their grandchildren – is intended to mobilise young voters.

“The moderate conservative right is dead in France, and, for the first time, it is possible that the National Rally will come to power,” said Jean-Yves Camus, a political scientist who studies nationalist movements in Europe.

Raised by his mother, an Italian immigrant, in the projects north of Paris, Mr. Bardella marks a break from the cookie-cutter technocrats formed in elite schools who have dominated French politics. He has recast — some would say sugarcoated — the angry message of the nationalist right so effectively that there is talk of “Bardellamania.”

“Our civilization can die,” Mr. Bardella told a crowd of more than 5,000 flag-waving supporters this past week, as chants of “Jordan! Jordan!” reverberated around a vast arena in Paris. “It can die because it will be submerged in migrants who will have changed our customs, culture and way of life irreversibly.”

Mr. Bardella’s campaign director, Alexandre Loubet, said that in the event of a clear victory for the National Rally, the party “would demand the dissolution of the National Assembly” and new elections. “If Mr. Macron has a minimum of respect for the will of the French people,” Mr. Loubet said, “he would do so.”

Mr. Macron, who is term-limited and has three more years in office, is unlikely to do any such thing, no matter the outcome.

In Mr. Bardella’s telling, always delivered in a level tone, Mr. Macron has brought France to the abyss through rampant immigration, a lax approach to lawlessness and violence, the loss of French identity, and “punitive” ecological change that makes life unaffordable.

“Everything is going from bad to worse,” said Alain Foy, a concierge who attended Mr. Bardella’s rally in Paris. “Sometimes I can’t believe what is happening, whether on immigration, purchasing power, insecurity, everything.” His sister, Marie Foy, added, “France is falling apart.”

Mr. Foy said that in the past, anyone disagreeing with the National Rally would quickly label Ms. Le Pen a racist or a fascist. “But with Bardella,” he said, “the good thing is that he thinks the same, but they can’t call him a racist because he’s an immigrant child of Italian parents.”

The exact nature of Mr. Bardella’s upbringing in the Seine-Saint-Denis suburb is unclear. He has portrayed it as a childhood of unrelenting hardship in projects afflicted by drug dealing and violence, where you could be killed for refusing someone a cigarette, and where his mother, who separated from his father when he was 1, struggled to make ends meet.

However, Mr. Bardella attended a private school, the Lycée Saint-Jean-Baptiste-de-la-Salle, where the fees were paid by his father, who had a small business renting coffee and vending machines, said Pascal Humeau, who was close to Mr. Bardella for many years.

Mr. Bardella proved to be a good student with strong political convictions, and in 2012, at age 16, he enrolled in the party he now leads, which was then called the National Front. He had interned for a week with the local police precinct, an experience that appears to have contributed to his political orientation.

“It was not a working-class upbringing, that’s clear, but nor was it privileged in any way,” Mr. Camus said. Although he had graduated with distinction from high school, Mr. Bardella dropped out of college to focus on politics, essentially the only work he has done.

With his deliberate manner and his charismatic good looks, he was quickly identified in Ms. Le Pen’s entourage as an ideal representative of a reinvented National Rally, stripped of the anti-Semitic invective of its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who called the Holocaust a “detail” of history.

Ms. Le Pen, intent on bringing her party into the mainstream, pushed him forward. Mr. Humeau, a former journalist, became Mr. Bardella’s media trainer in 2018. In him, he discovered a “rather sad young man, repeating Ms. Le Pen’s formulas, an empty shell, very controlled, but knowing little of what was happening in France or the world.”

Mr. Bardella was, however, a quick study. He learned to smile and appear more relaxed, retaining an air of “consensual humility” before eventually becoming what Mr. Humeau called “the media beast of today who scares his opponents.”

To what end, I asked? “He has had one objective since the age of 17 — to become prime minister and president,” Mr. Humeau said, “and I don’t think anyone can derail him.”

If Mr. Bardella has contrived to present a softer face of the National Rally, then there is little or no evidence that his own views or the party’s have moderated.

Mass immigration — some 5.1 million immigrants entered the European Union in 2022, more than double the number the previous year — is the core issue in the European election, polls show, along with the struggles of French families to make ends meet as the war in Ukraine has driven up energy and food prices.

In this context, the National Rally has successfully portrayed itself as the home of French patriotism, the party of people reasonably concerned that immigration is out of control.

With his Italian background, Mr. Bardella has been able to argue that the issue is not immigration itself, but the refusal of many migrants to assimilate. On the left, the very word patriotism in France tends to be viewed skeptically, a first step to nationalism and even war.

The benefits that immigrants can bring to societies with shrinking labor forces and tax bases are generally overlooked. Instead, the focus of the right is on migrants, particularly North African Muslims, benefiting from handouts and changing the looks, habits and cultures of urban neighborhoods.

“We have the courage and lucidity to say that if France becomes the country of everyone, it will no longer be the nation of anyone,” Mr. Bardella said this past week. “With the deregulation of migration, totalitarian Islamism does not only give its fanatics an order to separate themselves from the French Republic, but also to conquer it, in order to impose its laws and morals.”

Mr. Bardella has accused Mr. Macron of wanting to expand the 27-member European Union to 37 members, including the Turkey “of the Islamist” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and of intending to give up France’s veto over E.U. foreign policy decisions.

Turkish E.U. accession talks have in fact long been frozen, and Mr. Macron’s attachment to French sovereignty is fierce. The mildness of Mr. Bardella’s tone can mask a readiness to bend the truth.

He has tried, with vague evasions, to play down his party’s longtime closeness to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, a policy now revised, despite the repeated pro-Russian votes of his party in the European Parliament. It voted in 2021 against a resolution in support of Ukraine’s “independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity,” for example.

If Mr. Bardella has been campaigning by raising the specter of the “death” of France, Mr. Macron has also been speaking in apocalyptical terms of late, warning of the “death” of Europe if it does not achieve “strategic autonomy.”

The difference is that Mr. Bardella believes salvation lies in less Europe, not more. The European elections will also be a bellwether of the European idea itself.

“I worry that people won’t vote for Ms. Le Pen because of her name, with her father and all,” said Jacky Laquay, a retired factory worker who recently attended a Bardella rally in the north of France. “Bardella embodies the future of France.”

Certainly, Mr. Bardella appears unlikely to disappear from the political scene soon. “At 28, he has 40 years of political life in front of him,” Mr. Camus said. “That’s not nothing.”

=======

LEAKED DOCUMENT - Exit Strategy Palestine - Israel War

Below is the text of a White House document leaked, outlining the Biden administration's "principles" with respect to Gaza.

The document has not previously been made public. Joint Statement on Principles to Support a Future of Peace for Israelis and Palestinians

As members of the international community with a vital interest in supporting a future of peace and security for Israelis, Palestinians, and all those impacted by the conflict in Gaza, we affirm that key principles to secure a durable peace in the post-conflict period and advance a two-state solution include:

1. The international community must support the Palestinian people in rebuilding their lives in the Gaza Strip, including through extraordinary investments in humanitarian, reconstruction, and economic development needs. This requires the opening of land crossings into the Gaza Strip and the unimpeded and sustainable flow of humanitarian and reconstruction assistance. Gaza’s neighbors must support and facilitate this process.

2. Groups that espouse the use of violence or commit terrorist attacks against civilians cannot govern or dictate Gaza’s future. All terrorist organizations and armed groups must disarm and renounce violence. A disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration mechanism will facilitate this process in Gaza.

3. Israel must withdraw from the Gaza Strip with no reduction in its territory or reoccupation. There must be no forced displacement from Gaza and Palestinians must be allowed to return to all their communities in Gaza.

4. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip must ultimately be reunified under the sole authority of the Palestinian Authority, including civil governance and security responsibilities. The transitional period of Palestinian-led governance will require unique arrangements and support and contributions from international partners.

5. An enduring end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and end to the occupation can only be achieved through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization that resolve all final status issues. We fully support steps to resume final status negotiations to achieve the goal of two states for two peoples enjoying mutual recognition and full equal rights for all their citizens.

6. Palestinians deserve to live in dignity and security in an independent, contiguous, and viable state of their own and Israelis deserve to live in security and to be accepted, recognized, and integrated into the region, in a two-state solution negotiated on the basis of the June 4, 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps and a just and agreed solution for Palestinian refugees, as envisioned in the Arab Peace Initiative.

7. An end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict requires a coordinated regional effort. The possibility of normalization between Saudi Arabia and other Arab states and Israel with concrete progress toward a two-state solution is a promising avenue to achieving peace, security, and regional integration that will benefit all.

8. Unilateral actions and violations by the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority that undermine progress towards the two-state solution must end, including the expansion of settlements and outposts and the glorification of terrorism and violence. The Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority must uphold the rule of law and reject violence and incitement to violence, whether committed by officials or members of the public.

9. The parties must implement commitments made in prior agreements, including at Aqaba and Sharm al-Sheikh in 2023, and uphold the historic status quo at the Holy sites in Jerusalem and respect the special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. We recognize the deep connection of people of many faiths to Jerusalem and that the boundaries in Jerusalem are subject to final status negotiations.

10. The Palestinian Authority must implement a comprehensive reform agenda, focused on good governance, transparency, fighting corruption, and education and welfare reform. We agree to focus our diplomatic efforts on advancing these principles, setting the conditions for durable peace and security in the region.

With 2am DC at the moment, 7-8 hours ago will be Day 10 Jennifer Koonings, PMHNP, MS, MS, NYSAFE hunger strike outside White House in the wake US complicit Genocidal Gaza. This is [click link] her writing as member of CODEPINK Alert CODEPINK’s Newsletter. Jennifer is Certified Forensic Examiner for Adults and Children, really full knowledge about sexual assault, such as sexual assault by Israel to every Palestinian, like NYT reporting [photo uploaded]. For solidarity, since she started to hunger strike, I put myself eat 1 very tiny plate/day for break the fasting and for entire day after, extreme fasting 16.5 hours [based on my location]. In last 17 years, I already [minimum] 340 days / year to fasting [29 - 30 days for mandatory fasting for muslim, ramadan session, the rest is voluntary fasting / sunnah]. Photo Jennifer with ann Wright, retired retired US Army [like Leo M. Stolfi ] and also [Ann] retired State Department

Reflecting On My Hunger Strike for Gaza

Medea Benjamin Medea Benjamin Medea’s Substack and Jennifer Koonings

link GFM / GOFUNDME

footage by CODEPINK Alert CODEPINK’s Newsletter, multiple nurses in DC, after humanitarian duty in Gaza.

PCRF

Please keep donating to [1] PCRF / Palestine Children’s Relief Fund or [2] Freedom Flotilla.

As PCRF pictures by Dr Rajha in Gaza, Ariana Grande - Butera, and CODEPINK Alert

Jennifer Koonings PMHNP, MS, MS, NYSAFE part ofCODEPINK AlertJen

Unlike Israeli and pro zionist student [very easy] get a money [thanks for multiple billionaire], contrary, Palestinian very hard to get a money [like encampments across the world]. Link attached by CODEPINK Alert Jen Jennifer Koonings PMHNP, MS, MS, NYSAFE is Nagham, same healthcare worker like Jennifer but in Palestine. 3 Weeks ago is Nagham’s birthday. Link to donate. Nagham is still alive after Rafah bombing 342 hours ago.

Link to help journalist Abdelrahman Alkahout, Reshare by CODEPINK Alert

Jen Jennifer Koonings, PMHNP, MS, MS, NYSAFE. Abdelrahman is still alive after Rafah bombing 342 hours ago

Subscribe for free to receive new post