France
Parties on the left and right argued over the event, which was attended by former presidents and Marine Le Pen – while Macron stayed away
More than 100,000 people, including senior politicians, have marched in Paris against anti-Semitism, amid a dramatic increase in anti-Jewish incidents across France and bitter political disputes over whether – and how – they should take part.
“Our imperative today is … the total fight against anti-Semitism, which is the opposite of the values of the Republic,” said Gérard Larcher, spokesman for the French Senate and co-organizer of the largely peaceful demonstration as it began.
His counterpart in the House of Commons and co-organizer of the march, Yaël Braun-Pivet, said as the march near the Jardin du Luxembourg drew to a close: “In France we are able to unite on our common ground, our history and our to unite the future. ”
Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, whose Jewish father survived Auschwitz but took his own life at the age of 11, said at the head of the procession that the nation “cannot let anything get away” when it comes to anti-Semitism.
More than 3,000 police officers were deployed along the route of what Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin called a “great citizens’ march,” which was ultimately marred by minor scuffles as a left-wing Jewish group tried to prevent far-right party leaders from joining.
The march went without any major disruptions, only a few fights marred the procession. Photo: Claudia Greco/Portal
Tensions have been rising in France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim communities, since the Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent month-long bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
More than 1,250 anti-Semitic acts have been recorded since the conflict began – almost three times as many as in all of 2022 – and on Sunday more than 70 demonstrations against anti-Semitism took place across the country, including in cities such as Strasbourg, Lyon and Marseille.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, did not attend but previously said he would be there “in my heart and in my thoughts,” adding that there could be “no tolerance for the intolerable” and France was “united behind its values.” must stand”. his universalism”.
In a letter published in the newspaper Le Parisien, Macron condemned the “unbearable resurgence of unbridled anti-Semitism” in France. “A France that our Jewish citizens are afraid of is not France,” he said.
Two former presidents, François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as several former prime ministers joined the Paris march, as did several well-known personalities such as former soccer player Lilian Thuram and best-selling author Marc Levy.
One person held a banner at the march that read: “After the Jews, it’s your turn.” “Your silence kills.” Photo: Geoffroy van der Hasselt/AFP/Getty Images
The event was also attended by family members of some of the 40 French citizens killed in the first Hamas attack on October 7, as well as those missing or hostage.
The event divided France’s political class as it also included the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party, whose recent support for Israel was widely seen as an opportunistic attempt to bury its anti-Semitic past, sparking widespread criticism.
The party’s leader, Marine Le Pen, said the march should also be a show of resistance to “Islamic fundamentalism,” one of her party’s central talking points. She described objections as “petty political quibbles” and said the party was “exactly where we should be”.
But French government spokesman Olivier Véran described the RN’s participation as “indecent.” The far-right party was originally called the Front National and was founded by Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie, a convicted Holocaust denier.
Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel refused to march alongside MPs from the anti-immigrant party, saying it was founded by people who had been “repeatedly condemned for anti-Semitic statements” and “collaborated” with Nazi Germany. would have.
Socialist and Green MPs as well as trade unionists and youth groups also marched, albeit under their own banner, distancing themselves as much as possible from the RN and other representatives of the extreme right, including the anti-immigrant polemicist Éric Zemmour, who were surrounded by bodyguards.
Although some dissenting MPs from the radical left-wing Indomitable France (LFI) party took part in a march in Strasbourg to which the RN was not invited, it boycotted the Paris march after its leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon described it as a meeting for “friends of” had called for unconditional support for the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the Rassemblement National, described objections to the far-right party’s presence at the demonstration as “petty political squabbles.” Photo: Geoffroy van der Hasselt/AFP/Getty Images
Manuel Bompard, a leading lawmaker from Unbowed France, said after the march that it had “only served to whitewash the far right and unleash hate speech against Muslims.”
Borne, who called the fight against anti-Semitism a “vital fight for national cohesion,” criticized what she described as “political posturing” surrounding Sunday’s march. “The absence of unbowed France speaks for itself,” said the Prime Minister, while “the presence of the National Assembly deceives no one.”
The leader of the LFI faction, Mathilde Panot, and several other MPs from the far-left party took part in a demonstration in Paris on Saturday, calling for an immediate ceasefire and a “stop of the massacre in Gaza”.
According to Israel, around 1,200 people in Israel were killed in the Hamas attack and an estimated 240 were taken hostage. Israel’s subsequent air and ground strike killed more than 11,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
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