PARIS (AP) — President Emmanuel Macron has called on the French people to rise up against anti-Jewish acts ahead of a march in the capital later on Sunday to protest against rising antisemitism.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and numerous other politicians are to attend the march in the French capital. Paris authorities have deployed 3,000 police troops along the route of the protest called by the leaders of the Senate and parliament’s lower house, the National Assembly, amid an alarming increase in anti-Jewish acts in France since the start of Israel’s war against Hamas after its Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel.
French authorities have registered a more than 1,000 acts against Jews around the country in a month since the conflict in the Middle East began. In a letter addressed to the French on Sunday, and vowed that perpetrators will be prosecuted and punished.
“A France where our Jewish fellow citizens are afraid is not France,” Macron said in the letter, published in Le Parisien newspaper. He called on the country to remain “united behind its values … and work for peace and security for all in the Middle East.”
He noted that 40 French citizens were killed in the initial Hamas attack, and eight remain missing or held hostage.
“To this pain of the nation has been added the unbearable resurgence of unbridled antisemitism,” he said.
Macron said he will attend “in my heart and in spirit,” but not in person. “My role is to build unity of the country and to be firm on values,” Macron said Saturday on the sidelines of Armistice Day commemorations to mark the end of World War I.
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen is likely to attend Sunday’s march amid fierce criticism that her once-pariah National Rally party has failed to shake off its antisemitic heritage despite growing political legitimacy.
As of Saturday, officials counted 1,247 antisemitic acts since Oct. 7, nearly three times as many as for the whole of 2022, according to the Interior Ministry. France has the largest Jewish population in Europe, but given its own World War II collaboration with the Nazis, antisemitic acts today open old scars.
France has largely banned pro-Palestinian demonstrations, although supporters have marched in several French cities in the past weeks, including thousands demanding a cease-fire in Gaza in an authorized protest in Paris last Sunday.