Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in cities across France to protest against a recent rise in antisemitic attacks.
Political leaders from all parties, including former presidents Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, gathered in Paris, filling the Place de la Republique, to decry anti-Semitic acts with one common slogan: “Enough!” Macron visited the national Holocaust memorial in Paris with the heads of the Senate and National Assembly.
It comes amid a rise in anti-Jewish attacks in France, which is home to the world’s largest Jewish population outside of Israel and the US.
The government has warned antisemitism is “spreading like poison” in France, despite the trauma still felt after 78,000 French Jews were deported to death camps, aided by the French collaborationist Vichy government, during the Nazi occupation in the second world war.
Overnight on Monday a Jewish cemetery in Quatzenheim in Alsace was targeted and about 80 tombs were defaced with swastikas. Macron visited the cemetery on Tuesday, telling local leaders and members of the Jewish community: “It’s important for me to be here with you today.”
At the weekend, on the margins of a gilets jaunes (yellow vests) anti-government protest in Paris, a torrent of hate speech was directed at the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, the son of a Jewish Polish leather merchant who survived Auschwitz. A group of men called him a “dirty Zionist” and told him “France belongs to us”.
Two teenagers were arrested on Friday after they allegedly fired shots at a synagogue with an air rifle in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles, home to a large Jewish community. Earlier this month, swastikas were painted on Paris postboxes bearing portraits of the late politician and Holocaust survivor Simone Veil. The German word Juden (Jews) was sprayed on the window of a bagel bakery on the Île Saint-Louis, in the heart of the capital.
French media have noted a rise in antisemitic attacks and graffiti on the margins of the gilets jaunes protests, which began in November as a fuel tax revolt and turned into a wider anti-government, anti-elite movement. Some demonstrators have used antisemitic tropes to refer to Macron’s former job as a Rothschild investment banker, or made anti-Jewish salutes.
At the Paris demonstration, some carried placards saying “Fraternity”, “Enough is Enough” and “Exit hatred”.