France Unites Against Anti-Semitism: Thousands March in Paris

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Tens of thousands of people came out this Sunday to demonstrate against anti-Semitism in France, where hostile acts towards Jews have skyrocketed in the last month due to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and after days of disputes between political parties over who should participate.

“Our agenda today is… the total fight against anti-Semitism, which is the opposite of the values ​​of the republic,” the president of the Senate, Gerard Larcher, who organized the demonstration with the president of the Lower House, Yael Braun-Pivet, declared before the protesters set off.

Tension has been rising in the French capital – home to large Jewish and Muslim communities – following the October 7 attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas against Israel, followed by a month of Israeli bombings on the Gaza Strip. In parallel to the Paris demonstration, more than 70 demonstrations against anti-Semitism are planned today throughout France, the country that has the largest Jewish community in Europe, with about 500,000 people, but also that of Muslims, with several million.

More than 3,000 police and gendarmes were to be deployed to maintain security at the “great civic march,” according to Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin. “I never thought that one day I would have to demonstrate against anti-Semitism,” said Johanna, 46, a medical secretary from the Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis. She said her reason for coming was “not to be afraid of being Jewish.”

On the eve of the march, President Emmanuel Macron condemned the “unbearable resurgence of rampant anti-Semitism” in the country. “A France where our Jewish citizens are afraid is not France. A France where the French are afraid because of their religion or their origin is not France,” he wrote in a letter published on Saturday in the newspaper Le Parisien.

The Hamas attack on October 7 killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in Israel according to Israeli authorities, while the army says 240 people were taken hostage. The Israeli air and ground campaign in response has left more than 11,000 dead in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.

France has recorded almost 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” around the demonstration and said it was being “exploited” by some politicians for their own ends.

Early on Sunday, thousands of people gathered in the main French cities, including Lyon, Nice, and Strasbourg, under the same motto with which Braun-Pivet and Larcher will lead the Paris march: “For the Republic, against anti-Semitism.”

The march comes a day after several thousand people demonstrated in Paris chanting “Stop the massacre in Gaza.” Left-wing organizers called on France to “demand an immediate ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas militants.

The far-left party La Francia Insumisa (LFI) declared days before that 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.

Communist leader Fabien Roussel said he “would not march alongside” the RN. He said the far-right party had been founded by people “repeatedly convicted of anti-Semitic comments” and who “collaborated” with Nazi Germany.

Other left-wing parties, as well as youth and rights organizations, will march behind a common banner separate from the far right.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne declared on Sunday that “there is no room for posturing” in the march. “This is a vital battle for national cohesion,” she wrote before joining the head of the march alongside personalities such as former presidents François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy.

The march was heavily attended by members of all political parties and exclusionist groups came together in a show of solidarity in the face of the rampant anti-Semitism that has plagued France recently.