As Marine Le Pen, leader of the extreme-right Front National (FN) party, currently tops polls for next year's presidential election, she has been invited for the first time by the main Jewish radio to speak at a weekly political talk-show, prompting negative reactions within the Jewish community.
Until now, her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who headed the party for years until her daughter took over the leadership in January, had never been invited by a Jewish radio because of his repeated anti-Semitic outbursts.
"Marine Le Pen is not Jean-Marie Le Pen, for whom "the gas chambers are a detail of history", said Frederic Haziza, the journalist at Radio J in Paris who will interview Marine Le Pen on Sunday, recalling the comments made by the former FN president for which he was sentenced.
Haziza pointed out to Marine Le Pen's interview in the weekly magazine Le Point last month in which she said that the Holocaust was the "acme of barbarism.". "She challenged the negationist legacy of the party and of her father," the journalist added.
But last December she compared overflowing mosques in France with the Nazi occupation, later justifying her comments by saying she was merely giving voice to what many other people felt.
That outburst provoked the left-wing newspaper Liberation to warn that "unfortunately Marine Le Pen is an intelligent and combative woman who is very media savvy and sure of herself."
"She is indeed more dangerous even than her father. Given a lick of paint by Marine, xenophobia is back in the spotlight".
"We are also at an election period, she is very high in the polls and it is our duty as journalists to invite her. The questions will be uncompromising," Frederic Haziza said.
Two polls in the last four days showed the 42-year-old Marine Le Pen leading all declared and undeclared candidates for the 2012 presidential electionl. She scored 23 per cent of voters' first round preferences, beating President Nicolas Sarkozy and the leader of the Socialists, Martine Aubry, who were tied on 21 per cent.
Radio J denied that it took the initiative to issue an invitation to Marine Le Pen, claiming that it was forced to receive the National Front's candidate because of the rules of the High Audiovisual Council (CSA).
Serge Hajdenberg, president of Radio J, said: "We have not launched an invitation to Marine Le Pen. She asked to participate in our political forum under the contract signed with the CSA. We are in an election period which imposes equal time to candidates. It is not our initiative, under any circumstances.''
He mentioned the fact that even an Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, recently interviewed her and devoted an entire page to her political rise. "Did you called Haaretz to ask why ?", Hajdenberg asked.
But at Radio J not everyone is happy with Marine Le Pen being invited. “I said I will never interview her,” Michel Zerbib, the radio’s director of information, told EJP.
And within the Jewish community, the announcement is badly perceived. Richard Prasquier, president of CRIF, the umbrella group of Jewish organizations in France, who refuses to speak to Marine Le Pen, called the invitation "irresponsible."
"She is more dangerous than her father," he told EJP. "Her main objective, contrary to her father who was always seeking provocation, is to gain mainstream respectability and recognition."
"I regret that Jews give her a kosher certificate," he added.