A major march against antisemitism was held in Paris on Sunday, November 12th, at the call of the country’s main political forces. Supposed to be a moment of national unanimity, it was the subject of major divisions and, several days later, continues to be the subject of controversy.
Since Hamas attacked Israel, antisemitic acts have exploded in France. The idea of a march against antisemitism gradually gained ground within the various political groupings, until it was officially launched by the two presidents of the assemblies, Macronist Yaël Braun-Pivet for the National Assembly, and Les Républicains Gérard Larcher for the Senate.
The question arose as to whether the parties described as ‘far-right’ by the press would take part in the march, mainly the Rassemblement National, but also, to a lesser extent, Éric Zemmour’s party, Reconquête. As we announced, Sunday’s march acted as a ceremony of repentance for the Rassemblement National, which was accepted into the ranks of the demonstration, a way for the party to turn the page after several decades of opprobrium linked to accusations of antisemitism levelled at its founder Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Although representatives of the Rassemblement National did not march behind the official banner at the head of the procession, they were indeed present, and their participation was even endorsed by some leading figures in French political life, such as Emmanuel Macron’s former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Even more interesting was the statement made by Serge Klarsfeld, the son of a deportee and a lawyer well-known in France for being a former Nazi hunter with his wife Beate: “We should be delighted that the Rassemblement National is taking part in the march against antisemitism,” he said in an interview with Le Figaro. On this occasion, the symbolic cordon sanitaire put in place in the days of Socialist President François Mitterrand to isolate the Rassemblement National demonstrated its obsolescence. It remains to be seen whether this will have an impact on the next elections.
Bolstered by this symbolic success, the Rassemblement National is now using its credibility to defend the cause of the Jews of France. “A young Jew is more likely to risk his life in an Islamist environment, for example in Seine-Saint-Denis, than at a Rassemblement National demonstration”, said party spokesman and MP Sébastien Chenu.
The status of undesirable party is now the prerogative of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party, La France Insoumise, which ostensibly boycotted the march on November 12th. The party’s president communicated extensively on X about the questionable nature of the march, in which other emblematic formations of the Left, such as the historic CGT union, refused to participate.
In a new development, the newspaper Libération, the main organ of the French left, expressly condemned the position of La France Insoumise as “a caricature that does it no credit.” Despite the sanctimonious stance adopted by the former presidential candidate and initiator of the now-defunct NUPES coalition, it would appear that the Left is now struggling to appear as an effective supporter of the Jewish cause. A demonstration organised by La France Insoumise in front of the Vel d’Hiv, or former Vélodrome d’Hiver—the site of the biggest round-up organised in July 1942 under the Vichy regime—was even prevented and booed by an association of citizens of the Jewish faith to the sound of the slogan “LFI = collabo.”
In reality, apart from the political turnaround, was the march on 12 November a success? 182,000 demonstrators were counted in Paris. Yet, several observers noted the lack of ‘diversity’ in a march attended mainly by ethnic French. Few if any Muslims took part, and very few young people.
In fact, French Muslims were largely absent from this demonstration of strength against antisemitism. Several Muslim authorities openly criticised the march. The rector of the Paris mosque explained that it should have been a demonstration to “fight racism” rather than a demonstration against antisemitism, which obviously made little sense and ran the risk of drowning out the message.
In the days following the march, the controversy over the lack of enthusiasm—to put it mildly—on the part of Muslims to take part in the joint denunciation of antisemitism was rekindled by several events.
The academic Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, known for her denunciation of the activism of the Muslim Brotherhood, announced the resignation of the Chief Rabbi of France Moché Lewin from a working committee “on the adaptation of the discourse of Islam in France,” meeting at the Paris Mosque, after “the refusal to classify as terrorist the massacre perpetrated by Hamas in Israel on October 7th and to take part in the march for the Republic and against antisemitism” expressed by France’s main mosque.
On RMC radio on Tuesday, November 14th, Abdelali Mamoun, imam at the Grand Mosque of Paris, questioned the reality of the antisemitic acts committed in France in recent weeks: “Where are these 1,200 or so anti-Semitic acts that there are in France?” His statements caused an outcry. Yonathan Arfi, President of CRIF, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, called for the imam to be punished. “When you don’t want to see the problem of antisemitism, you are part of the problem. The 1,200 anti-Semitic acts are fuelled precisely by this denial of reality,” he deplored, denouncing the “revisionism in the present tense” expressed by Abdelali Mamoun.
Despite this body of corroborating evidence, the government—like the vast majority of the political class—refuses to name the facts and see a link between Islam, which has taken root in France as a result of massive immigration, and the dizzying rise in antisemitic acts. Asked by Europe 1 about the causes of the rise in antisemitism in France, the President of the French National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet naively replied that “she did not know why.”
This denial of reality can only fuel the growing mistrust among French Jews of the so-called traditional political parties, in favour of the formations of the national Right, RN, and Reconquête.
