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More than 180,000 join marches against anti-Semitism in France | Protests News<\/p>\n
More than 180,000 people across France, including tens of thousands in Paris, have joined marches to condemn a surge in anti-Semitism amid Israel\u2019s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza.<\/p>\n
As of Saturday, the interior minister said there had been 1,247 anti-Semitic acts since the war began on October 7, nearly three times as many as in the whole of 2022.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, former Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Holland, representatives of several parties on the left, and conservatives and centrists from President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s party attended Sunday\u2019s march in the French capital amid tight security.<\/p>\n
Macron did not attend but expressed his support for the protest and called on citizens to rise up against \u201cthe unbearable resurgence of unbridled antisemitism\u201d.<\/p>\n
Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, also stayed away, saying that the march would be a meeting of \u201cfriends of unconditional support for the massacre\u201d in Gaza. He also questioned the attendance of Marine Le Pen given her party\u2019s roots in anti-Semitism. The party was founded by her father who was convicted of Holocaust denial.<\/p>\n
Police said 105,000 people had joined the Paris march, while interior ministry figures put the nationwide figure at 182,000. More than 70 events took place across the country, including in major cities Lyon, Nice and Strasbourg.<\/p>\n \u201cOur order of the day today is\u2026 the total fight against anti-Semitism, which is the opposite of the values of the republic,\u201d said Senate Speaker Gerard Larcher, who organised the rallies with lower house Speaker Yael Braun-Pivet, as the marchers set off.<\/p>\n No major incidents were reported.<\/p>\n Holding a French flag, Robert Fiel said marching against anti-Semitism was \u201cmore than a duty\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a march against violence, against anti-Semitism, against all [political extremes] that are infiltrating the society, to show that the silent majority does exist,\u201d the 67-year-old said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had grandparents who escaped being transported to the concentration camps, luckily they aren\u2019t here to see that [anti-Semitism] is back,\u201d said Laura Cohen, a marcher in her 30s.<\/p>\n France has the largest Jewish population in Europe, numbering about 500,000 people.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone should feel like it\u2019s their business\u201d to combat anti-Jewish feeling, France\u2019s chief rabbi Haim Korsia told broadcaster Radio J.<\/p>\n Tensions had been rising in the French capital \u2013 home to large Jewish and Muslim communities \u2013 since the war began a month ago when the armed group Hamas launched a shock attack on Israel killing about 1,200 people and taking some 240 people captive.<\/p>\n In response, Israel began a bombardment on the densely-populated Gaza Strip that has so far killed at least 11,000 people.<\/p>\n Family members of some of the 40 French citizens killed in the initial Hamas attack, and of those missing or held captive, also took part in the march.<\/p>\n Patrick Klugman, a lawyer and a member of the \u201cFreethem\u201d committee working to obtain the captives\u2019 release, said the large participation in the march was meaningful and symbolic in reassuring Jewish communities in France.<\/p>\n \u201cI am very proud of my country because of this mobilisation,\u201d Klugman said. \u201cI feel less alone than in the past weeks and days.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the recent anti-Semitic acts, Paris prosecutors are investigating an incident on October 31, when buildings in the city and suburbs were daubed with dozens of Stars of David.<\/p>\n The graffiti, which brought back memories of the Nazi occupation of Paris during World War II and the deportation of Jews to death camps, was widely condemned.<\/p>\n Sunday\u2019s march took place following a number of pro-Palestinian rallies in Paris calling for an immediate ceasefire.<\/p>\n Macron has recently also joined calls for a ceasefire, urging Israel to stop bombing Gaza.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u0627\u0644\u0645\u0635\u062f\u0631<\/a>\u2018I feel less alone\u2019<\/h2>\n
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