Thousands took to the streets on Sunday evening to march against anti-Semitism in Paris, following less than a week of bickering by political parties over who should take part and a surge in anti-Semitic incidents across France.
Senate speaker Gerard Larcher, who organised the demonstration with lower house speaker Yael Braun-Pivet, told broadcaster LCP before the marchers set off that; ‘Our order of the day today is… the total fight against anti-Semitism which is the opposite of the values of the republic’.
Africa Today News, New York reports that tensions have been rising in the French capital — home to large Jewish and Muslim communities — in the wake of the October 7 attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by a month of Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
More than 3,000 police and gendarmes were to be be deployed to maintain security at the “great civic march”, according to Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin.
On the eve of the march, President Emmanuel Macron condemned the “unbearable resurgence of unbridled anti-Semitism” in the country.
“A France where our Jewish citizens are afraid is not France. A France where French people are afraid because of their religion or their origin is not France,” he wrote in a letter published Saturday in the daily Le Parisien.
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Hamas’s shock October 7 attack killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in Israel, according to Israeli officials, while the military says 240 people were taken hostage.
The Israeli air and ground campaign in response has left more than 11,000 people in Gaza dead, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
France has recorded nearly 1,250 anti-Semitic acts since the attack.
Macron said he would attend the march only “in my heart and in my thoughts”.
He condemned the “confusion” surrounding the rally and said it was being “exploited” by some politicians for their own ends.
Earlier Sunday, thousands of people gathered in major French cities including Lyon, Nice and Strasbourg behind the same slogan with which Braun-Pivet and Larcher will lead the Paris march: “For the Republic, against anti-Semitism”.
The hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party said days earlier it would boycott the event which the far-right National Rally (RN) plans to attend.
LFI leader Jean-Luc Melenchon rejected the march as a meeting of “friends of unconditional support for the massacre” of Palestinians in Gaza.