Thousands turned out on Sunday to march against anti-Semitism in Paris, and other cities, after days of bickering by political parties over who should take part and a surge in anti-Semitic incidents across France.
"Our order of the day today is... the total fight against anti-Semitism which is the opposite of the values of the republic," Senate speaker Gerard Larcher, who organised the demonstration with lower house speaker Yael Braun-Pivet, told broadcaster LCP before the marchers set off.
Tensions have been rising in the French capital – home to large Jewish and Muslim communities – in the wake of the 7 October attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by a month of Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
Police said 105,000 people attended Sunday's march in Paris which set off from the Invalides monument to the Senate at the Luxembourg gardens.
National cohesion
At the front of the march were Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, who told attendees that "there is no place for posturing".
"This is a vital battle for national cohesion," she wrote on X before joining the front of the march alongside prominent figures including former presidents Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy.
Borne's own father survived the Nazi death camp Auschwitz in occupied Poland, only to take his own life when she was 11.
"What unites us is not simply a flag, it is what it represents, it is the value of freedom, the value of human dignity. It is in this sense that anti-Semitism is an attack on this flag and on the Republic," Hollande told attendees on Sunday.
"I never thought I'd have to demonstrate one day against anti-Semitism," said Johanna, 46, a medical secretary from Paris suburb Seine-Saint-Denis.
She said her reason for coming was "so as not to be afraid to be Jewish".
Confusion
On the eve of the march, President Emmanuel Macron - who did not attend the march - condemned the "unbearable resurgence of unbridled anti-Semitism" in the country.
He condemned the "confusion" surrounding the rally and said it was being "exploited" by some politicians for their own ends.
"A France where our Jewish citizens are afraid is not France. A France where French people are afraid because of their religion or their origin is not France," he wrote in a letter published Saturday in the daily Le Parisien.
Around 500,000 Jewish people live in France, making up Europe's largest community.
France has recorded nearly 1,250 anti-Semitic acts since the attack.
Among the long list, Paris prosecutors are investigating an incident on 31 October, when buildings in the city and suburbs were daubed with dozens of Stars of David.
The graffiti, which brought back memories of the Nazi occupation of Paris during World War II and deportation of Jews to death camps, was condemned across the political spectrum.
Earlier Sunday, thousands of people gathered in major French cities including Lyon, Nice and Strasbourg behind the same slogan as the Paris march: "For the Republic, against anti-Semitism".
Everyone's business
"Everyone should feel like it's their business" to combat anti-Jewish feeling, France's chief rabbi Haim Korsia told broadcaster Radio J.
However, several Muslim bodies declined to join the march, saying they were disappointed that no mention had been made of Islamophobia.
The hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party said leader Jean-Luc Melenchon also boycotted the march, calling it a meeting of "friends of unconditional support for the massacre" of Palestinians in Gaza.
A separate rally against anti-Semitism that LFI organised at the monument to the Vél' d'Hiv roundup in Paris was disrupted on Sunday morning by counter-demonstrators, who were backed in a statement on X (formerly Twitter) by France's Representative Council of Jewish Institutions (CRIF).
Communist leader Fabien Roussel said he would "not march alongside" the far-right National Rally (RN) which he said had been founded by people who were "repeatedly condemned for anti-Semitic remarks" and who "collaborated" with Nazi Germany.
Other left-wing parties as well as youth and rights organisations marched behind a common banner separated from the far right.
Petty political quibbles
Far-right MP Marine Le Pen declared the march should also serve to stand against "Islamic fundamentalism" – a pet theme of her anti-immigrant party.
The National Rally (RN) was known for decades as the National Front (FN), led by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen – a convicted Holocaust denier.
Aiming to show the party has changed, "we are exactly where we should be" taking part in the march, Le Pen told reporters shortly before it began, calling any objections "petty political quibbles".
A group of counter-demonstrators from left-wing Jewish organisation Golem briefly attempted to prevent her from taking part before being sidelined by police.
The march came a day after several thousand people demonstrated in Paris calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.
(with AFP)
