Tens of thousands of people marched in Paris on Sunday to protest increasing acts of antisemitism during Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and representatives of several parties on the left, as well as far-right leader Marine Le Pen, attended Sunday's march in the French capital amid tight security, the AP reports. President Emmanuel Macron did not attend but expressed his support for the protest and called on citizens to rise up against "the unbearable resurgence of unbridled antisemitism." The leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, Jean-Luc Melenchon, stayed away from the march, saying last week on X that the march would be a meeting of "friends of unconditional support for the massacre" in Gaza.
Paris authorities deployed 3,000 police troops along the route of the protest called by the leaders of the Senate and parliament's lower house, the National Assembly. France has the largest Jewish population in Europe, but given its own World War II collaboration with the Nazis, antisemitic acts today open old scars. Marching against antisemitism is "more than a duty," said one demonstrator who was holding a French flag. "It's a march against violence, against antisemitism, against all (political extremes) that are infiltrating the society, to show that the silent majority does exist," said Robert Fiel, 67. Family members of some of the 40 French citizens killed in the initial Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and of those missing or held hostage, also took part in the march.
As of Saturday, officials counted 1,247 acts against Jews around France since Oct. 7, nearly three times as many as in the whole of 2022, according to the Interior Ministry. In a letter addressed to the French on Sunday, Macron vowed that perpetrators will be prosecuted and punished. "A France where our Jewish fellow citizens are afraid is not France," Macron said in the letter, published in Le Parisien newspaper. He called on the country to remain "united behind its values ... and work for peace and security for all in the Middle East."
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