A top figure in France's Socialist party and his journalist partner were attacked by a crowd shouting anti-Jewish slogans and chanting support for the extreme-right National Front, they said Wednesday.
Arnaud Montebourg and Audrey Pulvar, a prominent broadcaster, said a group of about 15 men surrounded them as they left a restaurant late Monday in the Paris 16th district and shouted "Le Pen for president", referring to extreme-right leader Marine Le Pen.
They also shouted "France for the French", "Juden, Juden, Juden" (which means Jews in German) and "Jean-Marie Le Pen has given us the midnight permission to hunt the Jews in Paris", a reference to the National Front founder and former leader. They then began throwing glasses at the couple as they left the restaurant, Pulvar said in Twitter messages.
The incident came just days after Pulvar gave Le Pen a grilling in a weekend television show about her association with extreme-right parties and neo-Nazi groups.
"This shows that there is a climate within Mrs Le Pen's (National Front) where racist speech is made freely," Pulvar told AFP.
Jonathan Hayoun, president of the French Union of Jewish students (UEJF) condemned the attack and said this was “proof of a trivialization of extreme-right ideas in France.”
Le Pen, who opinion polls put in third place in the presidential vote in April and May, said "obviously I condemn this type of aggression."
But she added: "You cannot consider, before the police have done their work, that these people are people from the National Front."
An opinion poll published Tuesday by IFOP said the Socialist candidate for the presidency, Francois Hollande, would take 28.5 percent of the vote in the first round, against 27 percent for President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Le Pen would come in third place in the first round with 17 percent, the poll said.
France will vote in the first round of the presidential election on April 22, followed by a second-round run-off on May 6.