There was no confusion. Nor even recovery, contrary to what the distressing postures of La France insoumise or the attempt by the leaders of the National Rally to rebuild a republican brand image by marching on November 12 might suggest.
On the contrary, we witnessed, between Les Invalides and Place Edmond-Rostand, from the National Assembly to the Senate, a dignified, calm and powerful march. Throughout France, we saw this tide of peaceful, serious faces advancing behind these words: “For the Republic, against anti-Semitism”. Nothing more, nothing less. Sometimes a Marseillaise, sung a cappella, and taken up by groups of demonstrators. Tricolor flags emerged above this immense and compact crowd, alongside small signs, on which one could read “I am Jewish”, “Love and respect”, “Jews, we love you” or even “We said never again”.
It was the – historic – parade of November 12, in which the two organizers, Yaël Braun-Pivet and Gérard Larcher, the Presidents of the two Chambers, two former Presidents of the Republic, former Prime Ministers, ministers, elected officials took part of the nation, and behind a long, very long procession of 105,000 French people, Jews or non-Jews, all gathered in a republican communion, all come to say stop to this poison which burns the veins of France. This poison of anti-Semitism, which Albert Cohen describes, when the writer, at the end of his life, remembered the day when, at the age of 10, he was called a yip: “You can run away, we you’ve seen enough, you’re not at home here, this isn’t your country, you have nothing to do with us, go ahead, get rid of the floor, go look around in Jerusalem if I’m there .” (1)
“Never deal with extremism, racism, anti-Semitism or the rejection of others,” warned President Jacques Chirac, in an address to the Frenchman delivered on March 11, 2007, at the end of his second term.
We remember seeing President François Mitterrand march in the street on May 14, 1990, against anti-Semitism and against racism, after the desecration of the Jewish cemetery in Carpentras.
A missed opportunity to put on your walking clothes again
We remember seeing President François Hollande march in the street on January 11, 2015, against terrorism, after the Islamist attacks against Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher.
We will not remember, unfortunately, having seen Emmanuel Macron march in the street on November 12, 2023, against anti-Semitism, after the tripling in less than a month of anti-Semitic acts in France. A missed opportunity, a missed appointment. Yet it was easy to join the French, not only by heart and by thought, not only by the words of this letter published in The Parisian the day before this walk, but putting on his walking clothes again. To denounce what he himself rightly described as “an unbearable resurgence of unbridled anti-Semitism”, his place was in the street. “It is beautiful to love with the heart and with the mind,” wrote Mme de Staël (2) two centuries ago: faced with complex thinking, gestures must remain simple.
(1) O you, human brothers, by Albert Cohen, 1972 (Folio).
(2) Of Germany, by Germaine de Staël, 1813 (Flammarion).