This is a signal sent by the French: more than 182,000 demonstrators marched in the country during marches against anti-Semitism, organized in many cities this Sunday, November 12. In Paris, there were, according to the police, 105,000 who gathered, in the presence of a good part of the French political class, including the extreme right, but without the head of state or the opposition of radical left.
“For the Republic, against anti-Semitism”: behind this slogan, the head of the procession set off from the square in front of the National Assembly before stopping several times to sing the Marseillaise. Few signs or banners, but the tricolor flags were out. The Esplanade des Invalides, the starting point of the march, remained filled with a compact crowd for a long time, reflecting a very large turnout.
“I didn’t think I would have to demonstrate one day against anti-Semitism,” Johanna, 46, a medical secretary in Seine-Saint-Denis, told AFP, who came for the sole reason that we should not “be afraid to be Jewish. Like many, she preferred to give only her first name.
“Citizen’s start”
A square of political figures marched, at the forefront of which were the two heads of Parliament, Yaël Braun-Pivet and Gérard Larcher, at the initiative of this march, as well as Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, ex-presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, and the president of Crif Yonathan Arfi.
Earlier in the day, other gatherings brought together thousands of people in Lyon, Nice and Strasbourg. “We are happy and reassured that the French responded,” said Yaël Braun-Pivet. “Our agenda is the Republic,” summarized Gérard Larcher, advocating a “citizen surge” in the face of the explosion in the number of acts hostile to Jews since the Hamas massacres in Israel on October 7 and the response massive military action that followed.
France has the largest Jewish community in Europe, with around 500,000 people, who live side by side with millions of Muslims. The increase in anti-Semitic acts is one of the signs of a feared importation of the conflict.